Waiting For The F.B.I.'s Report
America now awaits the results of the F.B.I.'s new investigation into Brett Kavanaugh's truthfulness with bated breath. Will they uncover anything? Will they provide clarity? Will they prove he was telling the truth or blatantly lying? We've all got until Friday to wonder what will be in their final report.
In fact, we may have even longer than that. The F.B.I. report, whatever's in it, will go first to the White House. The Trump administration then gets to decide whether to release the full report to the Senate or perhaps write their own summary of what it contains. Whatever goes to the Senate will likely leak to the public, so if they really wanted to they could just write their own interpretation of the F.B.I.'s findings and pass it along.
This will probably be politically unacceptable, at this point. My guess is that the public is going to demand to see the full report no matter what it says. The White House already tried to play cute with the F.B.I. investigation by severely limiting its scope, and they had to quickly reverse themselves in the face of accusations of attempting a coverup. If they do not initially release the full F.B.I. report, then the cries of "Coverup!" will be so loud that they'll also likely have to relent.
This entire exercise has an audience of five, it's worth keeping in mind. In the Senate, 45 Democrats and the two Independents are already on the record stating they do not believe Brett Kavanaugh belongs on the Supreme Court, so none of them will be changing their vote no matter what the F.B.I. report contains. On the other side of the aisle, 48 Republicans have indicated they will be voting for Kavanaugh's confirmation pretty much no matter what, so those can also be considered solid votes. Which puts the Senate vote at 48-47 in favor of confirmation.
The five holdouts are: Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. The first two are Democrats who represent deep red states (North Dakota and West Virginia), and who also are up for re-election this year. Jeff Flake is retiring, but is also reportedly seriously considering challenging Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are both from states with a wide independent streak -- Maine currently has an Independent senator, and Alaska currently has an Independent governor. Independents normally don't even have a chance getting elected to office in most states, but both Maine and Alaska have a long tradition of having a far less partisan electorate. Neither Murkowski nor Collins is up for re-election this time around, either.
Out of these five senators, any two must vote for confirmation for Kavanaugh to make it onto the court. That would put the vote at 50-50, and Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tiebreaking vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the high court. Or, to put it another way, four out of five of these senators must vote against confirmation for Kavanaugh to fail.
So what could be the deciding factor in the F.B.I. report? What would be enough to provide political cover for these senators? The clearest answer to that would be if the F.B.I. proved Kavanaugh lied under oath to the Senate committee (about anything). Flake and others (even Trump, if you can believe him) has stated that Kavanaugh being caught in a lie under oath would be an automatic disqualification. If the overwhelming evidence points to Kavanaugh lying, then he's probably toast.
Since the White House relented and gave the F.B.I. investigation free rein, this could mean just about anything. At this point, there seem to be three big areas of risk for Kavanaugh to be worried about: the sexual assault accusations, the extent of his drinking, and his explanations for what he wrote in his yearbook. There could indeed be other risky areas for Kavanaugh, but since the F.B.I. will be talking to people who went to school with him, these seem like the three most likely to be included in the questioning (and, ultimately, in the report).
The first of these is likely going to be the hardest to prove. A lot of time has elapsed since the initial accusations were made, and so far nobody has come forward to swear that they also witnessed exactly what the accusers have described. Now, perhaps this is because of the white-hot spotlight that has focused on these three women -- perhaps others aren't exactly eager to face such public scrutiny. Perhaps they'll quietly tell an F.B.I. agent the truth in a closed room, though. But then again, probably not. This is in fact the least likely of areas where Kavanaugh could be said to be proven to be lying beyond all shadow of a doubt.
His drinking, however, seems to be the most likely issue where Kavanaugh could be caught blatantly mischaracterizing his own behavior. We all know, now, that he loves beer. We'll take that as a given. But how much did he love beer back then, and how many beers did he love to drink at one time? Those are still very open questions. The only admission so far from Kavanaugh himself is that at times he drank until he passed out (or, as he put it, "went to sleep"). Right after he admitted this to the prosecutor the Republicans had hired, they immediately cut off her questioning and decided to politically grandstand instead. Perhaps they were nervous about what she was going to ask him next?
But he adamantly denied ever not remembering what happened during these drinking bouts. This could be the easiest statement to prove definitively false. All it would take is a bunch of fellow students telling the F.B.I. something along the lines of: "Kavanaugh would frequently come to me the next day and ask what he did the night before, because he couldn't remember." This is the lynchpin of his entire defense against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, because if he did occasionally drink to the point of blacking out, then he would have no memory at all of what he did during those occasions. This could mean that Ford was telling the absolute truth, and Kavanaugh was telling the truth as he remembered it. To put it another way, Kavanaugh didn't actively lie when he claims to have no memory of it happening, but because he was drunk to the point of blacking out, this would be meaningless in terms of refuting her story. The whole question of his next-day memories is key to his defense, and he never wavered from claiming that he never, ever drank to the point of not remembering what happened.
Less conclusive would be a large number of Kavanaugh's fellow students portraying his drinking as far more intense than he admitted under oath. This is already happening in the media, in fact, as more and more people are coming forward to state that Kavanaugh was a frequent drunk and a particularly belligerent drunk. This runs counter to the image Kavanaugh was trying to project during the hearing, but would it be enough to convince senators to switch votes? Absent clear statements from people who told the F.B.I. that Kavanaugh did indeed have memory lapses, this is not at all a sure thing. It could provide enough political cover for the two Democrats, but would it convince two of the three Republicans to vote against him? That remains to be seen.
The third problem area for Kavanaugh is his high school yearbook. He scoffed at such a thing even being discussed in the hearing, but then again he brought it up voluntarily in his opening statement, because he knew he was going to get asked about it. So he can't claim it's digging up old dirt when he was the one to introduce the subject himself. Of course anything he said in his opening statement is fair game, in other words.
There are plenty of statements Kavanaugh made during the hearing about his yearbook which are pretty laughably misleading (and that's being charitable). [I should point out that Vox has a pretty good rundown of all of these statements, for anyone interested in all the details.] Bragging about being part of the "Ralph Club" means you have a weak stomach? Puh-LEEZE. Any parent of a teenager worth his or her salt would risk straining a muscle with the eyeroll which would follow their own kid making such a claim. Pretty much everything Kavanaugh said about his yearbook was equally nothing more than a thin veneer of: "No, really, Mom and Dad, it meant this..." laid over a painfully obvious truth that he didn't want to cop to.
The easiest of these mischaracterizations to prove false is what Kavanaugh wrote on his yearbook page about Renate Dolphin (née Schroeder). The phrase "Renate alumni" (or variations such as "alumnus" or the misspelled "alumnius") reportedly appear in Kavanaugh's yearbook 14 separate times, either on students' individual pages or together with a group photo of football players. This means that a dozen or more boys at Kavanaugh's school claimed to be an "alumnus" of the woman.
Now, going back to that eyerolling parent, what would be the obvious interpretation of the use of such a phrase?
And yet Kavanaugh denies any such thing. In his opening statement he claimed to be outraged on her behalf because the media twisted it all around and made it naughty. He claimed it was an innocent indication that: "That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media's interpreted the term is related to sex." He also, later in his testimony, apologized directly to her: "I'm so sorry to her for that yearbook reference."
As I said, this could be the easiest of Kavanaugh's testimony to prove false. There are those dozen other boys who wrote the same thing in her yearbook, any of whom could tell the F.B.I. what it actually and indisputably meant (and also that everyone who used the term fully knew this at the time). One of the boys even included a short ditty to explain what it meant: "You need a date / And it's getting late / So don't hesitate / To call Renate." Are all dozen of these men going to now back up Kavanaugh's self-serving reinterpretation of the meaning of "Renate alumni," or will the F.B.I. learn the truth?
In fact, the real proof that Kavanaugh lied about this phrase already exists. Take his claim at face value, for the sake of argument. Let's say he's right, and the football players were all honoring a dear female friend of theirs by "showing affection" to her in their yearbook. Then why did none of these close friends who respected Renate so much ever show her the yearbook back then? Why did she only find out about it now?
The two facts together refute Kavanaugh's claim. The fact of him writing "Renate alumnius" in his yearbook and the fact that nobody who wrote the phrase back then showed Renate these entries in the yearbook at the time pretty much conclusively prove that Kavanaugh lied by trying to claim it was somehow an innocent thing to write -- indeed, something to "show affection" and that "she was one of us" -- and that it was only the big, bad media who interpreted it sexually. These facts are irreconcilable with Kavanaugh's story now. Further proof comes from Kavanaugh himself, in fact. If the yearbook entry were indeed as innocent and honorable as Kavanaugh claimed, then whyever would he feel the need to apologize for it? His testimony was a full-throated defense of all of his claims, and yet he felt the need to walk this particular one back, later in the hearing? If Kavanaugh is telling the truth, then why would he be "so sorry" for such an honorable phrase in his yearbook? And, more to the point, why didn't he show it to her and get her to sign that page back then?
Brett Kavanaugh knows what it means to give testimony under oath. He swore to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and he's known what that means since he attended law school (at the very least). So proving he lied should indeed be devastating to his chances of being confirmed. And, at this point, it doesn't even really matter what he can be proved to have lied about -- any proven lie should be enough for the five senators still on the fence. Or at least four of them. Jeff Flake, in particular, who has now gone on the record that any Kavanaugh lies under oath would be disqualifying to him, could not later argue: "Well, that was a pretty minor lie, so I'm going to overlook it."
I certainly don't envy Kavanaugh what he's going through this week. In fact, I'd go further and say I would hate for all the people who knew me in high school and college to now be talking to the F.B.I. about what I did back then. But then again I'm not a candidate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, and I didn't testify under oath to any of what I might have done back then, either.
It would indeed be ironic if Kavanaugh is tripped up not by his own sexual misconduct (which may or may not be proven by the F.B.I.), but rather by his empty boasting about a sexual conquest that he never actually made, in his high school yearbook. And then lying about it under oath. And then having his classmates tell the F.B.I. the real truth of the matter.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Mr K is roadkill, that's assured, Trump backed the bus up and down on him during his DRUMPFTA presser. Saying that he had admitted to having 'difficulties' with booze, which is precisely opposite to what MR. K had sworn to in front of the world...There's your out for the politically hamstrung. The question is...WHY?
I don't buy the dotard-notion, Trump might be thicker than a Whale Sandwich, but that was an epic clanger that the people behind him didn't even waste an eyeroll on. WHY?
Today we get (in print-therefore subject to a massive libel suit, that won't happen, as-per) the NYT massive-missive detailing the Trump family decades long ultra-tax con. The timing of which is suspect on its face, throw in a conveniently handy instant denial that is nothing more than a shrug-off and a hurriedly finished 'deal', and maybe the fog around Trump's on/off again statements about Mr. K.
Maybe I've missed my guess here, but it would energize the GOP base were Mr. K to fall at the last hurdle? Also, would it not take to much to hang the whole episode on the Democrats in the eyes of the demoralised?
This reeks of another Trumpian con-job to me...the polls are showing how the overall effect of this circus has had on the people...If Mr. K is voted down, the blue wave might not even amount to a hightide.
The only Dem-positive outcome, imho, is Mr. K withdrawing, sneering at the process and the Dem conspiracy, and doing a hasty Oozlum bird impersonation.
C W, again, you hit the mark...I just hope the 'sane resolution' doesn't come to pass. I'm guessing that Trump has a list of judges, that happen to be right-wing religious zealots, from which to choose Mr. K's replacement? Maybe a rush to vote and not protest too much is the best outcome for midterms.
LL&P
I hope the FBI interviewed Kavanaugh and asked him to play a jolly game of Devil's Triangle with them. That strikes me as almost the most obvious and provable lie.
I was a bit late in getting to this column on account of the 2 hr PBS documentary of Trump's Presidency ....Part 1. If you missed it, stream it. Part 2 airs tonight.
I suspect the FBI report will not drop any new shoes on K. It will confirm some aspects of what what has already been reported by The Press. What Senators have to fear is breaking news after Kavanaugh takes his seat. For 30 years or more. How much taint can the Republican Party take? Not many drunks stop drinking...especially on the first try.
Maybe I've missed my guess here, but it would energize the GOP base were Mr. K to fall at the last hurdle? Also, would it not take too much to hang the whole episode on the Democrats in the eyes of the demoralised?
Good point, as is the implication that Trump's playing both sides for suckers. But it must have occurred to someone in the GOP that a Kavanaugh loss could be the best thing to happen to them in the midterms, but they'd also have to pin the tail on the donkey, so to speak, and so far the only politician with his ass hanging out on this is Flake, and if Kav goes down, they'd also have those GOP wimmen to blame, which again, aren't Democrats.
Of course Tucker Carlson could spin out a tale of Left Wing conspiracy - but he probably will anyway, that being his regular shtick, and he being pretty much a one-trick-pony in that regard.
But overall, I'd have to agree with your assessment, JT. A win for Kavanaugh will energize the Dem base, a loss for Kav would have the opposite effect. Of course.
Trever Noah had an excellent question Monday night: Why is Trump and the GOP staying with this guy? With two years left in the term, it is obvious any nominee the Federalist Society (uh, I mean Trump) nominates will vote the way they want on (abortion, guns, power of the presidency, fill in the blank) and have a whole lot less baggage than this frat boy. It could even be a woman, which would help that nagging image problem with that key demographic. And it could be done before the midterms for political effect. So why not be strategic, pull Kav and get nearly everything they want anyway?
Great column, CW.
Other blatant lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee were the multiple times Kavanaugh took it upon himself to falsely testify for others. As you said, he is a judge who knows what it means to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." He nevertheless proffered false testimony under oath on others' behalf:
Not only has a longtime friend of Ford's not refuted her allegation, Ford's friend Leland Ingham Keyser stated that she believed Dr. Ford. Stating through your attorney that you have no memory of an event is not remotely in the same ballpark as refuting an allegation, and Kavanaugh knows this yet regardless chose to lie about it multiple times during his sworn testimony. After the hearing, Keyser released another statement through her lawyer reiterating that she "does not refute Dr. Ford's account, and she has already told the press that she believes Dr. Ford's account."
The Grand Old Prevaricators do not care. Their game plan now is the same as it ever is:
The only concern they're showing now is that for their sons. What if your son was wrongly accused? You poor white males should be afraid, and they play right into the identity politics of "white male grievance." Not content now to simply blame the victim, they are taking the additional step to demonize and attack Democrats as they cast Brett Kavanaugh in the role of the aggrieved. If this could happen to him, your son is next.
Make no mistake about it, though, if Brett Kavanaugh was innocent of these charges, there'd be no reason to downplay his drinking, to tell multiple lies under oath, and he'd be the first one calling for a full-throated investigation to clear his name, but that's not what's happening.
Today, they are demonizing the victim along with their political opponents. They are lying, mischaracterizing, and gaslighting, and this is why they "love the uneducated" (Trump's words)… because they're infinitely more easy to con, and the longer they buy into the scam, the harder it is for them to admit that they fell for it.
Scene from the 2018 Classic The Wizard of Trump Tower
The plucky little New York Times pulls back the curtain on the Trump Organization.....
The Wizard: Oh, er, [Into a microphone, which increases his voice dramatically] I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL [In normal voice] ... Wizard... of ...several...mostly fire resistant...Trump Towers...
Dorothy: You are?! I don't believe you.
The Wizard: I'm afraid it's true. There's no other Wizard except me...
Scarecrow: You scumbug!
Tin Man: Yeah!
Dorothy: Oh, you're a very bad man!
The Wizard: Oh, no, my dear, I... My father was the very bad man - I'm just a very bad Financial Wizard.
What do Dems need to do to win? More of this: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/10/03/midterms-show-you-can-teach-an-old-democratic-party-new-tricks/
Tom Perez (whom I like) providing tools and funds for a "50 State Strategy" such as that pioneered by Howard Dean, applauded by the Netroots and abandoned by the DNC post-Dean. It's back!
Charles Pierce on Kav and all his dirty dealings:
Brett Kavanaugh is a lawyer only because he went to law school and passed the bar. He's never tried a case, at least to my knowledge and, until he became a judge, he put his legal training at the service of high-end ratfcking, keeping the activities at least within sight of the traditional guard rails that stand between lawyers and 5-15 at Allenwood. Segretti was a lawyer. So was Gordon Liddy, who put Chapin to work. At least Liddy worked as a lawyer, being the prosecutor who busted Timothy Leary. (Of course, Liddy also once fired a revolver at the ceiling of a courtroom during his summation, so there's that.) Kavanaugh's only experience as a prosecutor was as a drooling operative in Ken Starr's little shop of sanctified presidential porn—which was, in many ways, one of the great ratfcking operations of all time, and certainly the most expensive.
(The latest bit of whitewash is the contention that Starr's shop reopened the investigation into Vince Foster's suicide so that Kavanaugh could put that particularly indecent fantasy to rest. Byron York is very big on this notion. While Kavanaugh ultimately concluded that Foster had indeed shot himself to death, the notion that he'd set out to conclude that—or to lay to rest the endless rightwing conspiracy ratfcking that attended the sad event—ignores some salient facts, most notably that Kavanaugh came to a conclusion at which two previous investigations already had arrived. There was no reason to investigate it again just because some Arkansas Project fantasists were using it as a prop. This was an attempt to see if the conspiracy theories contained enough truth to be weaponized in the pursuit of Bill Clinton.)
In short, there is a fine living to be made as a partisan lawyer specializing in high-end political ratfcking. It's an industry now. But a partisan ratfcking lawyer should not be able to hedge, and fudge, and prevaricate his way onto the Supreme Court. I'm also worried that he might chuck some water at counsel during oral arguments, but I'm putting that concern on, well, ice for a while.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23570618/brett-kavanaugh-republican-ratfcker-supreme-court/
Geez there's a bunch of good pieces out there today!
I’m going to have ask people to stop accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of lying under oath. It’s really getting in the way of him becoming a Supreme Court justice, which is something he is entitled to because he went to Yale University, was good at sports and likes beer.
He is also white and a man in a position of great power, characteristics that entitle him to a certain number of lies that don’t count. I thought everybody knew about these permissible lies, but apparently not. They’re called “little white-male-privilege lies” and are defined as: Lies about things a powerful white man deems small or unimportant, told to avoid hurting that same powerful white man’s ambitions.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-kavanaugh-lies-ludington-trump-huppke-20181001-story.html
Paula: My favorite paragraph from that piece:
This is the thing about ratfckers. The truth is always pliable. Even in categorical statements, it's pliable. The point of ratfcking is to win. This was true when Donald Segretti and all those GOP frat brothers at USC invented the marvelously descriptive term to describe how they messed with student elections in their college days—which, by Kavanaugh standards, of course, doesn't count because certainly what Segretti did in college had no bearing on his career as a lawyer in later life.
Exactly. When Segretti was later caught acting as a ratfcker for Nixon, nobody that knew him was even surprised, just as no one who knew Kav in the White House is surprised that it's been brought up now.
And there's a good chance that it counted in his favor when Trump heard the thumbnail bio on which he undoubtedly based his decision to nominate him. After all, Trump is the ratfcker president. I could make a good case that that's why his base loves him.
[12] Balthasar:
And there's a good chance that it counted in his favor when Trump heard the thumbnail bio on which he undoubtedly based his decision to nominate him. After all, Trump is the ratfcker president. I could make a good case that that's why his base loves him.
Meant to add "Yep" - hit the wrong button!
Paula
9|10|11
Yes, ma'am. It always comes back to all politics being local... because it is. What plays in Peoria ain't going to fly in Fresno; that is a fact that will never change.
Great articles too. Thanks! :)
Paula: You're right about the 2nd article too.
Again, my favorite part, a quote directly from Kavanaugh former friend and now law professor Charles "Chad" Ludington:
“For the fact is, at Yale, and I can speak to no other times, Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker. I know, because, especially in our first two years of college, I often drank with him. On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”
I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer.
Ludington seems to have caught on to a feature of Kavanaugh's testimony that also appeared contrived to me, where he kept repeating "I like beer". Someone at the White House apparently told him that this would play very well with Trump's base, and that he should repeat this phrase often, which he ended doing to the point of self-parody.
Murkowski will be a no, Manchin a yes. Collins and Flake, depending on how Trump's sewage of yesterday truly made their skins crawl, are the hinges. Heitkamp, I confess, I know nothing about her plight, and refuse look into it, on the grounds that I simply want this to disappear. The longer Trump gets to tinker with his ACME 'He-too*' kit, the better. The GOP old guard must be running around, their hair afire, over this latest heap of verbal diarrhea from their 'Shirt-lifter In Chief'. The GOP are ok with the men vote pretty much across the board (Black and Hispanic being the exception) … So,Trump naturally picks a fight with the demographic they really could use some help with, Women... I think Trump just believes all women worship his shadow, and therefore has kidded himself that they will vote for him, regardless of his boundless misogyny.
Let him remain secure in that delusion.
LL&P
ouch... first the ABA and now this, Mr. K being slapped at the dinner table by another one of his hobby clubs...
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/409775-national-council-of-churches-calls-for-kavanaughs-nomination-to
All those nights while a youth in service to the lord, shot to shit.
LL&P
It looks like Trump did not give the FBI free reign to conduct the investigation as they saw fit and instead greatly limited the scope of what they could do!
Many of Kavanaugh’s former classmates contacted the FBI claiming that they know that he lied under oath, but the FBI said they weren’t interested.
As of this morning , the Times was running a letter to the Senate from over 1700 law professors stating that Kavanaugh’s testimony proves he is not fit to sit on the Supreme Court.