(Cross-posted from Blog on the Run)
In any sane republic, Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination would have been pulled by now. Not only has he clearly perjured himself, more on which in a minute, he also appears to have a gambling problem and may himself have been involved in criminal activity.
But it hasn’t been and it almost certainly won’t be. That’s because the once-noble Republican Party has degenerated completely into a continuing criminal enterprise.
Let us start with perjury, which has been exposed by some of the very documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush 43 White House that the Trump Administration has been so reluctant to release. (Those records are public under the law, by the way.)
He has denied receiving documents stolen from the Senate Judiciary’s Democratic staff by a GOP staffer, Michael Miranda, in 2002, only to have those copies of those documents sent to him from Miranda show up in his White House email. Yet in 2004 and 2006, he denied under oath ever receiving those documents. Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, personally called him out on it.
BREAKING: Kavanaugh testified he never received any docs that even “appeared to … have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff.” Well, he got 8 pages of material taken VERBATIM from my files, obviously written by Dem staff, LABELED “not [for] distribution”.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Kavanaugh also in 2006 denied knowing anything about President George W. Bush’s (then-illegal) warrantless domestic wiretapping program until The New York Times first reported publicly on the existence of the program in 2001. Yet among documents released this week was this email from Kavanaugh to all-around Bush Administration war criminal John Yoo on Sept. 17, 2001, discussing the program.
Also in 2006, Kavanaugh denied under oath having been involved in any White House discussions related to torture. But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the same senator to whom Kavanaugh gave his 2006 denial, said Thursday that released documents indicate that Kavanaugh took part in such discussions at least three times.
During his own 2004 confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh denied under oath any involvement in the selection of William Pryor for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Once again, the documents show otherwise: Kavanaugh helped pick Pryor and get him confirmed.
Similarly, in 2006 Kavanaugh denied under oath having been involved in the selection of Charles Pickering for a federal judgeship, only to have documents pop up more recently that say otherwise.
Kavanaugh also may have misled a lot of people about his recent $200,000 in what he said was credit-card debt. That debt disappeared pretty quickly before his nomination, and because he and his wife both work for the government and don’t make a ton of money by Washington standards, it’s not clear how that happened.
That’s not the only question about that debt, though. This Kavanaugh email seems to suggest that he was a gambler. Frankly, that sounds a lot more plausible than his original story, which is that he ran up that debt because friends had been slow to repay him for purchases of Washington Nationals season tickets on their behalf. Who fronts friends $200,000 on an annual salary of only about $174,000?
Finally, Kavanaugh’s lies about the stolen Democratic records might not just leave him exposed to perjury charges, he may face other charges as well, such as receiving stolen property. Leahy explains it in this Twitter thread.
Finally, keep in mind that only a small fraction of the records pertaining to Kavanaugh’s tenure in the Bush White House has been made public. Given what we’ve learned from what little we have seen so far, it’s no surprise that Republicans have fought so hard to keep the records secret. And it also would be no surprise if more damaging information about Kavanaugh came to light as more records are released, as they will be.
So why haven’t senior Republicans tried to persuade Trump to pull the nomination, that we know of? Maybe they have, but given how badly this administration leaks, if that had been the case I suspect we’d have heard about it by now.
I suspect the reason they haven’t tried is because they’re JUST FINE with Kavanaugh? Why? Because Kavanaugh, like Trump, will advance their conservative agenda if confirmed, just as he has on the D.C. Circuit. He’ll vote to ban abortion and even birth control, approve their destruction of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, approve their gerrymandering, uphold their executive orders, and on and on. Character and probity mean nothing to them. They chose Kavanaugh precisely BECAUSE, for all their professed fealty to stare decisis, he will rewrite the Constitution from the bench. Given that opportunity, they would say nothing even if he shot someone dead at high noon in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Senate Democrats already should have referred these matters to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. But let’s not kid ourselves: Jeff Sessions, or any other Trump-appointed attorney general, won’t allow that investigation to happen.
So his nomination, which by all rights should be dead, shuffles foward until the day, not long from now, when he can begin eating the brains of a lot of stuff that makes America such a wonderful country.
And so, because Republicans hold majorities on the Senate Judiciary Committee and in the full body, Kavanaugh probably will be confirmed before the leaves even start changing. But if the Democrats retake at least one house of Congress in November, Kavanaugh could be facing impeachment before midwinter. He probably wouldn’t be convicted – Republicans would need only 34 Senate votes to keep him in office, but he’d be permanently tarred. And that, in this era of diminished expectations, might be the best we can hope for.
So, to sum up: Not only has Kavanaugh lied under oath to the Senate at least five times, not only does his own email suggest he has a gambling problem, but Sen. Patrick Leahy also caught him lying about his involvement in the Republican effort to benefit from Russian interference in the 2016 election – the very investigation of which will come before him if he’s confirmed to the Supreme Court and which might well come before him on the D.C. Circuit even if he isn’t. This nomination is fatally flawed and should be pulled. If it isn’t, Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis should vote against it. But it won’t be, and they won’t, because the GOP is nothing anymore but a continuing criminal enterprise.
***
UPDATE, 9/8: My longtime friend Rob Campany writes on Facebook:
Bill Burck, the lawyer who has been deciding which of these documents about Kavanaugh are released to the committee and of those which documents the public is allowed to see, currently represents former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former White House adviser Steve Bannon and the current White House counsel Don McGahn, specifically in the Russia matter, along with at least three other current or former Trump staffers.
He’s representing like six people in the Russia investigation and he`s deciding what we’re allowed to know about the nominee who appears to have been picked probably because of the Russian investigation.
It’s starting to feel like the Mueller investigation and the Kavanaugh nomination are not competing stories anymore. It is starting to feel like this is the same story.
Rob refers to this MSNBC story, which I encourage you to see. Not only are we on the verge of confirming a gambler and perjurer — and having a gambling issue is only one of many things that can keep you from even having a law license in most states — we may be confirming someone complicit in the Russia conspiracy.
