During the Trump administration era, we’ve been treated to a variety of own goals and unforced errors. From the scandal-plagued Cabinet to the lawyers who try to represent Trump, every now and then we got a faux pas that could be part of some dastardly mastermind scheme but honestly is probably just a brainfart of a mistake.
The last week in the Kavanaugh nomination process has offered yet another one of these treasures for historians in decades to come. Two to three weeks ago, Bart Kavanaugh’s confirmation was a near certainty. We were debating how Murkowski and Collins would eventually vote but we knew that they would just allow themselves to be duped, again, and vote to confirm Kavanaugh, whose greatest problem at that time was simply having a large black hole in his work record during the W. Bush years (it’s still a large black hole) and having been a political operative before his ascension to the federal Court of Appeals.
But then Dr. Blasey Ford, an ordinary, unremarkable citizen and contemporary of Kavanaugh brought the world down on him. Over the next two weeks, the nomination has bounced between a sure thing to a disaster to everything in between. Trump could have withdrawn Kavanaugh’s nomination at the first sign of trouble. Odds are that first sign of trouble wasn’t actually three weeks ago but months ago as it seems like both Kavanaugh and the White House Counsel’s office probably knew about these potential allegations a long time ago and tried to keep it from the public.
Fast forward a bit and last Thursday’s hearing was negotiated, Dr. Blasey Ford distinguished herself while Bart Kavanaugh embarassed himself, and suddenly we’re negotiating a re-opening of the FBI background check into Kavanaugh… something that was unthinkable three weeks ago. Over the last three weeks, a slow parade of character witnesses have come forward disputing Kavanaugh’s claims about himself without even needing to confirm Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations; although many of those witnesses have reconstructed a world and time when such a sexual assault was very probable, not only possible.
Now, we’re at the end of an FBI investigation headed by the White House Counsel’s office and directed by Trump. We never would have gotten to this point had it not been for the courage and tenacity of Dr. Blasey Ford, Ms. Ramirez, and Ms. Swetnick. And now that we’re here, within an FBI investigation controlled by the White House, we can see the charade and “sham” that such an investigation has become.
Is there any reason why, if Trump decides to fire Attorney General Sessions and / or replace Deputy AG Rosenstein, we would expect anything different from Trump and his cronies. We’ve seen Trump make public, verifiable statements about how open and all-encompassing the FBI investigation into Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations is. And yet report after report and news article after news article shows how boxed in the FBI actually is when it comes to who they can interview and what kind of evidence they are allowed to collect. There’s no doubt that if the Mueller probe is placed under White House supervision that we could hypothetically have the Mueller investigation continue, but with curtailed authority and a revised mandate that would allow Mueller to investigate nothing. After all, why deal with the grumbling from not having an FBI investigation when you can run an investigation that is cut off at its knees.
Making comparisons is one of the greatest things when you’re trying to assess a situation and make your own choices or decisions. Without Dr. Blasey Ford’s coming forward and forcing the hand of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask for this FBI investigation, we wouldn’t have gotten this glimpse of the Mueller probe under a slavish Attorney General. We wouldn’t be ready, in the future, for a time when a new Attorney General takes over and starts curtailing the Mueller probe. Same goes with a Rosenstein replacement. We wouldn’t have believed that the FBI could be hamstrung like this, where agents clearly want to interview potential witnesses and collect as much information as possible but where their mandate is so limited that they’re not allowed to. We wouldn’t get a first-hand glimpse of how an FBI investigation (with the FBI’s hands tied behind its back) and the absence of an investigation are basically the same thing when Trump is running the show.
Without Dr. Blasey Ford, we wouldn’t have seen an FBI investigation where the two primary figures (Dr. Ford and Bart Kavanaugh) aren’t even interviewed. And we wouldn’t have heard Republicans whining about how there are no corroborating witnesses, having conveniently forgotten that they’ve set the rules so that no corroborating witnesses can actually come forward to offer testimony or make statements to the FBI. And we wouldn’t have experienced an FBI investigation that had a specific time limit, instead of having a clear prompt that allowed the FBI to take as long as they wanted to run as thorough an investigation as they could to arrive at the truth.
I’ve realized a few things over the last week. That individual citizens, no matter how ordinary, can be extraordinary and can be heroes when they choose to be. Despite the promise of GOP smears and threats, three women and oodles of witnesses have come forward to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation for as long as they could. I have no illusions. If Trump and the GOP leadership view Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a win-lose game, they will browbeat their conference into submission. We have given GOP Senators all the excuses they need to cast a “no” vote for Kavanaugh but I doubt many, if any, will take us up on it. Murkowski, Flake, and Collins can of course make me eat my words but I have a feeling I’ll forever be hungry if I need to wait on their consciences or logical reasoning. At the end of the day, GOP Senators are happy to look past sexual assault allegations and the complete absence of judicial temperament in order to score a “win.” I guess when you’re looking at a future where your base shrinks while you desperately try to cling to power by any means necessary, foreign or domestic, you need to take as many wins as you can get.
I look forward to the November elections. I look forward to a newly empowered Democratic majority in the House and hopefully a base majority in the Senate. And I look forward to beginning the task of saving our Constitution with one of the most obvious of roles for our Congress to play… a check on the orange, tiny-handed boy who would be dictator.