Kavanaugh’s critics have circulated a six-page opposition research document tying him to former 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, who abruptly retired in December after several of his former female clerks accused him of sexual harassment.

The document argues it is virtually impossible Kavanaugh, who served on a screening committee for Kennedy’s Supreme Court clerkship alongside Kozinski, was unaware of Kozinski’s behavior — though nobody has stepped forward to make that explosive allegation in public…

Conservatives have also fixated on a 2011 challenge to Obamacare where Kavanaugh ruled that the individual mandate functioned as a tax and invoked an 1867 law preventing individuals from challenging taxes before they have gone into effect. (The individual mandate went into effect in 2014.) But he also advised that, whatever its constitutional shortcomings, “Congress could eliminate any such potential problem.”…

On a call with associates on Monday, Cruz warned that Kavanaugh is the sort of “unreliable” jurist by whom Republicans have been disappointed in the past, and he has worked worked to bolster the prospects of his colleague, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).