Brett Kavanaugh Had Massive Credit Card Debt. The White House Blames Baseball.

The Supreme Court nominee is reportedly a big Washington Nationals fan.
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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh charged tens of thousands of dollars to personal credit cards over the past decade and was sometimes as much as $200,000 in debt, according to financial disclosure forms reported by The Washington Post.

The reason, according to the White House: baseball.

Kavanaugh incurred much of that debt buying Washington Nationals season tickets for himself and his friends, White House spokesman Raj Shah told the Post, noting that some of the expenses were also used for unspecified home improvements.

The judge had between $60,000 and $200,000 stretched between three credit cards and a personal loan in 2016, but all were paid off in full or had balances below reporting requirements by the following year.

Kavanaugh has since stopped buying Nationals season tickets, Shah said. The White House did not reply to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) downplayed the newest controversy.

“In a breaking news bombshell report just last night, we learned that Judge Kavanaugh enjoys America’s pastime,” McConnell said.

Kavanaugh’s financial disclosures also showed he had two assets worth up to $65,000 in 2017, far less than current members of the Supreme Court. He is not required to disclose the value of property on such documents (he owns a house with his wife, Ashley, in the D.C. area, purchased for $1.2 million in 2006).

Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed by Trump last year, reported assets of at least $3.6 million, and the average net worth of current members of the court was $4.6 million last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Kavanaugh has served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since his appointment in 2006 and draws an annual salary of about $220,000 a year. He also earned around $27,000 from teaching at Harvard Law School.

“It sounds like he’s living on what he earns,” Larry Noble, a former lawyer for the Federal Election Commission, told Bloomberg.

If confirmed to the Supreme Court, he’ll be paid $255,300 as an associate justice.

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