WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is asserting that President Donald Trump chose Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court because Kavanaugh would protect Trump from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Kavanaugh wrote in a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article that it would be appropriate for Congress to enact a statute that would allow civil lawsuits against a sitting president to be deferred until the president’s term ends. He said Congress should consider doing the same with “respect to criminal investigations and prosecutions of the President.”

Kavanaugh came to that conclusion after working on i independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s team investigating Bill Clinton and then serving in the administration of President George W. Bush.

Schumer is criticizing those conclusions, asking, “Mr. Kavanaugh: Is the president above the law?”

Meanwhile, Judge Kavanaugh’s former law clerks are encouraging the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm him to the Supreme Court.

In a letter to the committee Tuesday, 34 of Kavanaugh’s law clerks praise Kavanaugh as a mentor and role model.

The group of Democrats, Republicans and independents write they are “united in this: Our admiration and fondness for Judge Kavanaugh run deep.”

The former clerks also praise his “humility,” saying: “Judge Kavanaugh never assumes he knows the answers in advance and never takes for granted that his view of the law will prevail.”

Writing he would “ably and conscientiously” serve on the Supreme Court, they summarize Kavanaugh’s legal practice as: “Shoot straight, be careful and brave, work as hard as you possibly can, and then work a little harder.”

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