This is not a trial. Senators are not confined to formal evidence. They cannot ignore what the FBI has been told to ignore, and they need to explain this to the nation.
The Republicans have coordinated to represent to the public that the standard for judging Kavanaugh is “beyond a reasonable doubt” and that their judgment must be confined to only the evidence entered in the proceedings.
This framing must be rejected.
Democrats must be emphatic: the Republicans have conspired to hide the facts of Kavanaugh’s professional record and his personal past from the nation. They have used unprecedented partisan screening of his records, unprecedented assertions of Presidential privilege by Trump (for records of more than 10 years before Trump was elected). Every Republican Senator has cooperated in the concealment of any potentially problematic factual records of Kavanaugh’s professional career and personal life.
Democrat’s in the Senate must be firm in their role to advise and consent as is their Constitutional duty. Democrats cannot allow the Republican Party to deny the Democrats the ability to speak the truth on the Senate floor, to acknowledge that facts of what is being reported, and to explain to the people the lengths to which the Republican Party is going to prevent the people from knowing the truth.
Every witness story from credible news organizations shouldbe placed into the record.
Every witness who made efforts to contact the FBI and was ignored needs to be listed.
Every witness whose claims confirm that Kavanaugh has lied under oath needs to be listed.
Democrats must stand and give voice to those who are being silenced by those with the power in the Senate, and by the man in the oval office, and by the legions of Republican Party loyalists willing to aid in the silencing of these witnesses.
Democrats must make the case that while the Republicans want to deny the truth, and that silencing the witnesses is needed for them to pretend that the truth does not exist. Democrats should be clear that no liar should be on the Supreme Court, and that Senators who willingly use their power to suppress the truth from the public do so because they have reason to want to hide the truth from the people.
Democrats need to state that the people deserve the facts; they deserve the truth, and the Republican’s rush for this confirmation is motivated by their fear of the country actually knowing the truth.
The Republicans are not advising and consenting; they are not deliberating. Nor are they rubberstamping. The Republicans are lying to the American people and the world. They are making up new rules as they go in order to seize power, power that they must possess in order to impose their unpopular policies on the majority of the citizens in our democracy.
The FBI’s investigation was a sham. Democrats should not shy away from this. They should make clear their belief that the FBI was capable of responding to every witness who attempted to reach them, but that the President would not allow it. That the Democrats believe the FBI was capable of constructing an accurate outline of the facts developed from interviews with these witnesses. But the President would not allow that, and that the Republicans in the Senate did not want it.
The Democrats should make clear that the work of investigative journalists in just the past week exceeds all of that done by the Republican staff of the Judiciary Committee in the last couple months.
The Democrats should remind the world that the all-male Republican members of the Judiciary Committee felt it necessary to hide behind a female questioner and that their every single action of the past week proves that they have never been interested in the truth of Dr. Ford’s testimony, but only the politics of how contain it.
The Democrats should state unequivocally that any Senator who argues that the recent witness stories ignored by the FBI must be ignored by the Senate are themselves complicit in the cover-up. These witness stories are corroboration, but not of what Republicans want the people of our country to hear.
The Republicans plan to use their power, to put their man on the Supreme Court, a provable liar, a likely perjurer, and not let the truth stand in their way.
Democrats should make that clear.