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With a sexual assault allegation building against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Republican Senate leadership refusing to allow an independent investigation of the claim, it's worth remembering that this is far from the only question raised about Kavanaugh's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court. It's also worth reiterating that Republicans have been covering up for him since his nomination, releasing a small fraction of the documentation behind his political career.
That small fraction, about 7 percent of the total, has already proven dicey for him with a handful of examples of out-and-out perjury rising up. Beyond parts of his testimony where he clearly was not telling the truth, there are those areas where he'd have to be a total idiot or amnesiac to maintain his claims.
The Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, has an exhaustive examination of one of those claims: that Kavanaugh never had any idea at all while he was in the Bush White House, coordinating judicial nominations, that the information he was getting from Republican Judiciary staffer Manny Miranda was stolen from committee Democrats, 4,670 files taken over an 18-month period from 2001 to 2003.
Kessler creates a timeline based on the documents eventually made public by the committee, emails between Miranda and Kavanaugh in which Miranda is directly quoting from highly sensitive materials created by and for committee Democrats. It’s material that would never be made public or shared with the opposition. Kavanaugh's insistence that "nothing raised red flags and that he never received documents that appeared to be stolen or obtained in an 'untoward' manner," Kessler concludes, "defy logic" and "strains credulity." And this isn't very flattering to Kavanaugh: "It reminds us of Sergeant Schultz in the 1960s TV show 'Hogan’s Heroes'—'I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!'" Ouch.
The "best-case scenario is that Kavanaugh, who is up for a seat on the nation’s highest court, has a glaring lack of curiosity or a superficial level of discernment," Kessler concludes. "The worst-case scenario is that he has been feigning ignorance since his first confirmation hearing in the Senate in April 2004, which was held after the Senate sergeant-at-arms had released his report documenting Miranda’s serial theft." Kessler says "feigning ignorance," the rest of the world says "lying." Whether he is stupid or duplicitous, though, he should not be on the Supreme Court.
It's why there has to be a real investigation into his accuser’s claims, not the sham that we're seeing from the committee. But it's also why Republicans are not going to let that happen. They already know he's going to lie about it.
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