Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., defended former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and appeared to obliquely rebuke a legal opinion written by Brett Kavanaugh hours before meeting the Supreme Court nominee.
The Kentucky Republican, a swing vote whose opposition could block Kavanaugh, was not pressed for his views on the nomination during a Tuesday event hosted by the Fund for American Studies. But one student asked about Snowden, who exposed the NSA's bulk collection of domestic call records – a program at the heart of Paul's unease with Kavanaugh.
"He didn't sell secrets to the Russians, he wasn't a traitor. He revealed something that revealed the highest ranking member of our intelligence community lied. I think he did it as a whistle-blower, he was reporting malfeasance," Paul said.
Paul, who previously joked about Snowden sharing a prison cell with former intelligence director James Clapper, whose inaccurate testimony Snowden exposed, doubled down after polling students, finding a similar number viewed Snowden as a traitor and a whistleblower.
"I don't see him as a traitor at all," Paul added about Snowden, saying later, "People have to decide on Snowden. My preference has become stronger and stronger that he was revealing the government was lying to us in a big way." Paul said he'd like to see a deal struck where Snowden can return from Russia without a long prison sentence.
"Maybe we will comment after we meet," Paul told the Washington Examiner about Kavanaugh as he left the Tuesday event.
Paul largely has refrained from commenting on Kavanaugh since his July 9 nomination by President Trump. In an interview published by Politico on Monday, however, Paul said he's undecided on how to vote.
"I am honestly undecided," Paul said. "I am very concerned about his position on privacy and the Fourth Amendment. This is not a small deal for me. This is a big deal. Kavanaugh’s position is basically that national security trumps privacy. And he said it very strongly and explicitly. And that worries me."
With Republicans holding such a slim majority in the Senate, Paul's vote alone could doom Kavanaugh.
Paul spokesman Sergio Gor did not respond to a request for comment on the timing of a meeting between Paul and Kavanaugh. Paul campaign aide Doug Stafford told the Courier Journal that the men will meet "later" on Tuesday.
Paul and Kavanaugh hold starkly different legal views on the government's dragnet collection of domestic records, specifically the once secret bulk collection of phone call metadata.
Paul filed a lawsuit claiming the phone dragnet violated the Fourth Amendment, then forced Patriot Act provisions to lapse in protest. Kavanaugh, meanwhile, went out of his way to defend the program's legality, even after Congress ended the collection in 2015.
Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrent opinion that the bulk call record collection wasn't a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, citing the third-party doctrine of the Supreme Court's 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland. But he added if it was a “search," authorities still could take the records without a warrant because there was a “special need” in preventing terrorism.
Paul, who argued Tuesday in favor of expanding privacy rights to digital records, appeared to indirectly rebuke Kavanaugh's legal analysis.
"If the government is going to make an argument that national security trumps the Fourth Amendment, they could make it for everything," he said "There's a national security argument for having all of your information."
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