Let’s take a little time today to talk about the House of Kavanaugh—specifically, the hefty mortgage on said house.
In 2006, Brett & Ashley Kavanaugh bought a house for $1.22m. Kavanaugh was confirmed as a federal appeals judge the same year — earning a salary of $175,000 at the time. He has supplemented his income by teaching law courses, which brings in $27,000 a year.
They put $245k down, a number that does not appear on his financial disclosures of 2005, which show a net worth of $91k.
That’s a mighty big down payment and an absolutely bonkers mortgage given the income level. The mortgage payments ($4600/mo.) alone were more than what Brett Kavanaugh took home in 2006 after taxes.
Even in the mid-2000s, at height of RE bubble, why would any bank approve such a terrible loan? And why would Brett and Ashley Kavanaugh agree to it?
Within a year of buying the house, the family was drowning in credit card debt. By the end of 2006, Brett and Ashley Kavanaugh owed five financial institutions, combined, a total of one million dollars.
How in the world did the Kavanaugh family manage to navigate such a financial mess without going broke?
Given:
- A huge and sudden infusion of money needed to buy his house
- The insane ebbs and flows of his finances
- The story about purchasing baseball tickets for “old friends” and accruing $60-200k of debt in doing so
- His propensity for lying
- His clear comfort with political dark money
There is clearly more to this story. If a sitting Supreme Court Justice is beholden to unknown creditors, we need to know. Who owns Kavanaugh?
Recovering Democracy 