United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has not referred judicial misconduct complaints against Judge Brett Kavanaugh to a judicial panel for investigation, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Judge Kavanaugh currently serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

A fellow judge on the panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, forwarded more than a dozen misconduct complaints to Roberts after concluding that the reports were substantive enough that they should not be investigated by fellow judges on the same panel.

“The complaints do not pertain to any conduct in which Judge Kavanaugh engaged as a judge,” Henderson said in a statement. “The complaints seek investigations only of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

“The situation is highly unusual, legal experts and several people familiar with the matter said,” The Post explained. “Never before has a Supreme Court nominee been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommends that a series of misconduct claims against that nominee warrant review.”

Roberts was appointed by then-President George W. Bush, who revealed in his memoir that Kavanaugh had helped him decide to nominate Roberts to the court.

“If Justice Roberts sits on the complaints then they will reside in a kind of purgatory and will never be adjudicated,” New York University Law School Professor Stephen Gillers explained. “This is not how the rules anticipated the process would work.”

Image by McConnell Center via Flickr and a CC license

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, just before noon on Friday blasted her Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee for pressing ahead with Judge Brett Kavanaugh‘s confirmation.

The senior Democratic Senator from Minnesota, usually collegial and even-tempered, expressed outrage over Thursday’s hearing.

“I look at it, what are you hiding? What would it hurt?” she said, of having the FBI re-open its background check into Kavanaugh, and investigate the claims of sexual misconduct made by at least three women accusers.

“What I have heard today just adds to this,” Sen. Klobuchar told Republicans.

“When I heard this sanctimonious talk, about some kind of a political strategy,” by Democrats, she said, “well, I’ll give you exhibit A: Merrick Garland, who was delayed for nearly ten months.”

“You talk about a nominee getting off the floor when all we are asking for is one week for an investigation, and you kept Garland away from this committee for ten months. That’s not even a comparison,” she said, flabbergasted.

“That was a strategy yesterday. Boy was it a strategy,” she charged.

Over the course of several hours Thursday a visibly angry Judge Kavanaugh attacked Democrats, warned them, “what goes around comes around,” called the proceedings a “circus,” and even suggested Senator Klobuchar might have a drinking problem. (He later apologized to her for that attack.)

Watch:

“You talk about a nominee getting off the floor when all we are asking for is 1 week for an investigation and you kept [Merrick] Garland away from this committee for 10 months. That’s not even a comparison” says Sen. Klobuchar on not investigating Kavanaugh accusations further pic.twitter.com/Z64OTXggRT

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 28, 2018

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