“Brett was certainly a true believer in the Starr investigation,” a Washington defense attorney told me, reflecting on the formative moment of Brett Kavanaugh’s legal career. “But it seems his service in the Bush administration has made him skeptical of the wisdom of investigations and litigation involving the president.” That change of heart—articulated in a controversial 2009 white paper—is now at the center of the debate over his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Does Kavanaugh believe Donald Trump is above the law?

The question is hardly hypothetical. With Robert Mueller’s obstruction probe winding down and the White House gearing up for a fight, it is not inconceivable that a Supreme Court battle over Mueller’s authority could be Kavanaugh’s first major case. Trump’s lawyers are prepared to argue that the president is not obligated to sit for an interview with Mueller and has limitless power to shut down the Russia inquiry or pardon anyone involved—potentially including himself. In short: Trump is not only above the law—he is the law.

Nearly 20 years ago, Kavanaugh would have vociferously disagreed. As a young attorney working for independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Kavanaugh urged his boss not to cut Bill Clinton any slack in his examination of the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. “I am strongly opposed to giving the President any ‘break,’” he wrote, according to Ken Gormley’s definitive book on the era, The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr. Clinton, he continued, “has disgraced his Office, the legal system, and the American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her life into a shambles—callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle. He has committed perjury. . . . He has tried to disgrace . . . this Office with a sustained propaganda campaign that would make Nixon blush.” When the time came to help write the Starr report, Kavanaugh argued that Clinton should be impeached for lying to his staff and misleading the American public—a standard that would make Trump sweat if upheld today.

After working in the White House for George W. Bush, however, Kavanaugh’s views evolved. In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote in the Minnesota Law Review that the probe into Clinton’s behavior was a “mistake” in retrospect. “The nation certainly would have been better off if President Clinton could have focused on Osama bin Laden without being distracted by the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and its criminal investigation offshoots.” While Kavanaugh contended that a sitting president cannot be indicted—a view that is widely held in the legal community—he also took his interpretation of the executive’s power one step further, suggesting that Congress should pass a law that allows the chief executive to defer such investigations until after they are out of office. “Congress might consider a law exempting a President—while in office—from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel. Criminal investigations targeted at or revolving around a President are inevitably politicized by both their supporters and critics,” he wrote.

Trump critics, naturally, have seized on these lines as evidence that Kavanaugh would be sympathetic to efforts by the president’s legal team to undermine Mueller’s authority or resist a subpoena. Some have even suggested that Trump selected Kavanaugh specifically for that reason. “Donald Trump is the most self-serving, self-interested politician, certainly of our time, that’s ever been in the White House,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Tuesday on Morning Joe. “That’s why he has selected Judge Kavanaugh, because of this single 2009 article . . . to protect himself.”