Tipsheet

Hey, Dianne, If Your Secret Letter That Could Clip Kavanaugh Was Serious, Why Did You Wait So Long To Contact The FBI?

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  September 14, 2018 1:05 PM

Senate Democrats know they’re going to be defeated on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The GOP has the votes. They don’t. They can’t block him, partially the reason why the opposition to this nomination, while intense at times, has been lackluster overall. They have little tools to fight with against the Trump White House on judges, which has been pushing through nominees at all levels.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote on his nomination is set for September 20. As Katie wrote yesterday, there’s been a zero hour attempt to derail Kavanaugh, who has proven to be mainstream, level-headed, and eminently qualified to be our next Supreme Court Justice, with some shoddy secret letter about an alleged incident of sexual misconduct that happened decades ago, though it’s so secret it cannot be shared with Republicans. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has the document, which she sent to the FBI. This isn’t new either; Feinstein knew about thissince July. If there was any hope of muddying this nominee with a possible criminal investigation, the Democrats came up short. The FBI isn’t pursuing one. Maybe it’s because this whole episode is total and utter bullcrap. I mean, it is, folks. The allegation is that Kavanaugh and a friend locked a girl in a room at a party when he was 17-years-old. 

UPDATE: The allegation is actually more serious, but, again, something is off here.

As for the drama, well, The Wall Street Journal has a plausible explanation for this last minute move [emphasis mine]:

Some Democrat was bound to have something. Mr. Kavanaugh had come through his confirmation hearing last week without a dent, and Democrats had made themselves look bad by editing his quotes and spreading innuendo unrelated to his judicial views. Meanwhile, the political left is demanding that Democrats do something, anything, to stop the highly qualified jurist from joining the High Court.

Enter DiFi. “I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Ms. Feinstein said in a statement. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”

Ms. Feinstein offered no details, and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said Thursday that she didn’t share the information with him. News reports say the information refers to a letter from a woman concerning possible sexual misconduct when she and Mr. Kavanaugh were both in high school. That would have been sometime in the early 1980s.

News reports also say that Ms. Feinstein has had the letter since the summer,and that it was first sent to the office of Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from Silicon Valley. But if the “information” is worrying enough to send to the FBI, why did Sen. Feinstein wait so long? She didn’t bring it up during the summer in the run-up to the hearings, didn’t mention it when she met with Judge Kavanaugh, and didn’t think it was important enough to tell her colleagues.

The charitable explanation is that she didn’t think the information was credible enough to warrant investigation, but that now under pressure from her colleagues she felt obliged to surface it.

[…]

So here’s what we have: A story floated at the last minute about an accusation whose details are unknown from a woman whose identity is secret. The episode says more about the desperation of Democrats than it does about Mr. Kavanaugh, and the real disgrace would be if Republicans did anything other than move promptly to a confirmation vote.

Columnist Kimberley Strassel commented on social media that this point, the secret letter from a secret person who alleges sexual misconduct, which was kept from the GOP, but wasn’t serious enough to bring to the FBI until now, is “scary.” It sounds very…deep state, huh?

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Oh, and on top of this super secret letter crap, Democrats sent Kavanaugh over 1,000 additional questions, the most for any nominee combined in U.S. history. The game is over, Democrats. Again, you lost and we won:

Senate Democrats submitted a record number of written questions to President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, in a move Republicans said was the latest attempt to delay confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

The 1,278 questions are four times more than the number asked of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s first high court pick, last year. Indeed, it’s more than the combined total for every justice in U.S. history, said Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley.

[…]

Nominees are usually given a week to answer the written questions, which are supposed to be clarifications and follow-ups to the questions the judge answered in person during last week’s confirmation hearing.

Our own Guy Benson breaks down the allegation:

And who says we're not at a state of war with the Democrats? Because with this, and a slew of other antics, we are.