Now that the Senate has voted to end debate on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and will shortly move to a final vote, let’s get one thing straight – for Senate Democrats determined to block the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, no FBI investigation that did not turn up irrefutable evidence of Kavanaugh’s guilt would ever have been good enough.
That’s because Senate Democrats weren’t ever really interested in an FBI investigation that actually probed the allegations made against Judge Kavanaugh. They were interested in destroying him politically, or, at the very least, delaying the vote on his confirmation past the elections, and they were just using the FBI investigation as their latest means to that end.
How can I be so sure? Because if Senate Democrats had wanted a real FBI investigation for the purposes of determining what did or did not happen one night 36 years ago, they wouldn’t have sat on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation for six weeks – six weeks during which time the FBI could have quietly conducted its investigation, out of the public eye, with a view to talking to witnesses and seeking corroborating or exculpatory evidence for the charges made against him.
They wouldn’t have leaked to the media Dr. Ford’s confidential letter, sent to the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, against the wishes of the woman making an allegation that she said she wanted to remain confidential.
They wouldn’t have set her up with anti-Trump lawyers who – as her own testimony last week made clear – did not convey to their client the committee majority’s willingness to consider her allegation in confidence, by sending Chairman Chuck Grassley or committee staffers to California to interview her in the privacy of her own home, or wherever else she would have felt most comfortable.
They wouldn’t have let Dr. Ford’s good friend Monica McLean pressure Leland Keyser, another long-time friend of Dr. Ford’s – who, despite Dr. Ford’s including her in a list of witnesses to Dr. Ford’s account, said she had no recollection of the party and had never before even met Kavanaugh – to change her story.
Instead, in direct violation of her wishes, they leaked to the media her confidential letter. In fact, they leaked it to so many journalists that reporters showed up at her home and her classroom seeking to interview her.
How do I know it was Democrats who leaked her letter? Because they were the only ones who had it, that’s how. She didn’t send her letter or share her story with Republicans. She shared her story with her Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, and with her Senator, Dianne Feinstein, both of whom are Democrats. They were the only ones who had the letter. No one else could have leaked it.
It was only when Dr. Ford realized that, contrary to her expressed wishes, her name was being widely circulated in the journalistic community that she decided to go public with an interview in The Washington Post.
In other words, Democrats determined to block Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court sacrificed the desired anonymity of their claimant at the altar of their own political ends.
To them, of course, that was perfectly all right – nothing should have been allowed to stand in the way of their objectives, not even the privacy of one of their own. Dr. Ford’s life will never be the same, for good or ill, and Democrats alone bear the blame for that.
So, instead, we got a FBI investigation conducted under the white-hot spotlight of national media attention.
But while the agreement worked out by Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake and Delaware Democrat Sen. Chris Coons – that the investigation delay the confirmation process by no more than seven days, and that it be limited to examining the “current” and “credible” allegations against the judge (that is, the allegations made by Dr. Ford and by Deborah Ramirez) – may have worked for last Friday’s exercise, it didn’t take Democrats 48 hours to abandon that agreement and demand more: more time, and more witnesses to be interviewed.
And now that the FBI has concluded its investigation without interviewing Dr. Ford or Judge Kavanaugh – given their sworn testimony last week, the FBI apparently deemed there was no need – Democrats are once again caterwauling, criticizing the FBI report as “inadequate,” “incomplete,” “stunted,” “straitjacketed,” “very limited,” and “a cover up.”
Or, as Sen. Feinstein said, “The most notable part of this report is what’s not in it.” Well, of course, because it contained no evidence corroborating any of the sexual allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.
But I’d bet my last dollar we wouldn’t be hearing that complaint if the FBI report had contained irrefutable evidence corroborating Dr. Ford’s claims.
This is beyond ridiculous. End the charade. Call the vote.