As a federal judge, Brett Kavanaugh is required by law to submit detailed financial reports. These reports are all public documents, readily available to anyone who wishes to look.

In his 2009 financial disclosure report, Kavanaugh listed four credit cards, issued by USAA, Citibank, Chase, and Bank of America:

At the time, Kavanaugh reported balances of between $5,000 and $15,000 on the first two, and balances between $15,000 and $50,000 on the second two. (The documents require a range of debt be reported, not an exact figure). At the absolute minimum, he was carrying $40,000 on his four credit cards — a significant figure — and could have accumulated up to a staggering $130,000 in credit card debt.

The following year, 2010, Kavanaugh began teaching at Harvard Law School. He added more to his Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) loan, carrying a balance between $15,000 and $50,000 — ostensibly to consolidate his credit card debt — and brought his four credit cards each into the “Code J” range of $5,000-$14,999:

Conservatively, he remained $35,000 in the red, although the actual debt figure was likely higher than that.

This pattern went on for the next several years. Although he managed to pay off the Citibank credit card and chip away at some of the others, Kavanaugh was still in debt on three cards, plus the TSP loan. By 2015, he had paid off three of the original cards, and disclosed a debt of less than $15,000 on the Chase card. The TSP loan remained. He appeared to finally be righting the ship.

The next year, his wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, who once worked as George W. Bush’s private secretary and had been a stay-at-home mother prior to 2016, took a job as the Town Manager of Section 5 of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Curiously, this coincided with a big spike in credit card debt, not a decline, as one might expect. In 2016, Kavanaugh was again “Code K” across three credit cards and the TSP loan. All four liabilities were between $15,000 and $50,000 each, meaning his total debt load was between $60,000 and $200,000.

What was he spending all that money on? Home improvements, Kavanaugh told the Senate:

Over the years, we have sunk a decent amount of money into our home for sometimes unanticipated repairs and improvements. As many homeowners probably appreciate, the list sometimes seems to never end, and for us it has included over the years: replacing the heating and air conditioning system and air conditioning units, replacing the water heater, painting and repairing the full exterior of the house, painting the interior of the house, replacing the porch flooring on the front and side porches with composite wood, gutter repairs, roof repairs, new refrigerator, new oven, ceiling leaks, ongoing flooding in the basement, waterproofing the basement, mold removal in the basement, drainage work because of excess water outside the house that was running into the neighbor’s property, fence repair, and so on. Maintaining a house, especially an old house like ours, can be expensive.

And this statement is where he gets into trouble. Some of the improvements listed — specifically, the HVAC, the waterproofing of the basement, and the hot water heater replacement — require permits. A thorough search of permits filed in Montgomery County, Maryland, show no approvals for Kavanaugh’s property. Thus, Kavanaugh is either perjuring himself about those repairs being the source of his debt, or he failed to obtain required permits. Both are unlawful. He’s either lying to the building inspector of Montgomery County, or to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In 2017, despite bankrolling all those much-ballyhooed home improvements, Kavanaugh’s debts mostly vanished. All three credit cards were suddenly — and inexplicably — paid off. The only remaining liability was the TSP loan, which shrunk to less than $15,000.

The Kavanaughs showed pre-tax income of about $287,000 that year — significantly more than most Americans earn, but not enough to absorb so much credit card debt on top of their other financial responsibilities. The mortgage payments on his $1.2 million home come to roughly $60,000 a year, the property taxes something like $10,000. Tuition for his two daughters to attend Blessed Sacrament is $20,000. Throw in $110,000 of credit card debt repayment, and the outlay just for those expenses is an even $200,000. That means that, after taxes, the Kavanaugh family of four, living in tony Chevy Chase, managed to spend about $3000 a month on all other expenses — health insurance, life insurance, homeowners insurance, auto insurance, cell phones, automobiles, cable, internet, as well as food and entertainment. This last category famously includes MLB baseball tickets, as well as membership to not one but two exclusive country clubs, the Congressional and the Chevy Chase Club. “We paid the full price of the club’s entry fee,” Kavanaugh testified about the latter, “and we pay regular dues in the same amount that other members pay. We did not and do not receive any discounts.”

Million dollar mortgage, two country clubs, private school tuition, myriad home improvements, and sizable debt repayment…Something doesn’t add up.