Hearings may go sideways for GOP
This week’s Senate hearing on whether it is Dr. Christine Blasey Ford who is telling the truth when she alleges that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, or Kavanaugh when he denies it, calls to mind another congressional confrontation that transfixed the nation 70 years ago last month.
In August 1948, journalist Whittaker Chambers, an admitted former Communist Party member, testified that he and New Dealer Alger Hiss had served in the party together. Hiss, a Harvard-educated lawyer who had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes before a distinguished legal career took him to the highest levels of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, immediately asked for the opportunity to appear before Congress to deny the charge under oath. Betting that his pedigree and bearing would easily enable him to win any credibility contest, Hiss appeared before a congressional committee with Chambers, a pedestrian, even depressive figure.
It did not work out that way. Faced with Chambers’ detailed testimony, Hiss was forced to backtrack, conceding that he knew Chambers but by a different name. Things went downhill for Hiss thereafter; his story crumbled when Chambers was able to produce documentary evidence corroborating his allegations, and Hiss was ultimately convicted of perjury, his once lofty career destroyed.
This week’s hearings will not result in perjury charges against anyone, but the stakes are arguably higher than those at play during the Chambers-Hiss affair. Once the rumors of a sexual assault by an anonymous alleged victim surfaced, the Kavanaugh camp hoped she would stay anonymous. After Ford detailed her allegations in The Washington Post, it hoped she would decide not to testify under oath. Now that she has agreed to testify, its hope is that the highly credentialed, highly polished Kavanaugh will do no worse than battle Ford — a stranger to any publicity let alone the international spotlight and bitterly attacked by the judicial nominee’s supporters — to a draw.
One problem for the Trump White House is the curious case of Mark Judge. All these years later, Ford was able to remember the name of Kavanaugh’s close friend who, she said, was in the room when the alleged assault occurred. Indeed, Judge has been Kavanaugh’s friend since their days together at Georgetown Prep, when the attack is said to have taken place. When the controversy broke, Judge told a publication friendly to Kavanaugh that the very idea that his friend would do any such thing was preposterous, and that he had never observed anything like it. The problem is that when offered the opportunity to state as much under oath, with the personal reputation of his close friend and the fate of the U.S. Supreme Court in the balance, Judge decided not to do so. This has not lent rock-solid credence to his denial, or to Kavanaugh’s.
The same is true of Kavanaugh’s team’s refusal to permit the FBI investigation into Ford’s allegations called for by Ford’s lawyers. That she wants such an investigation suggests some confidence on her part that her account will be supported. That Kavanaugh is opposed to one suggests that he shares her belief.
Nor has the president helped his nominee’s cause by tweeting that had the assault actually taken place, the then-15-year-old Ford would have gone down to the police station and filed criminal charges against Kavanaugh. This patently asinine assertion was too much for Sen. Susan Collins, and presumably others. “(W)e know that allegations of sexual assault are one of the most unreported crimes that exist,” Collins said.
Though there has been recklessness exhibited in more than one quarter, the disregard for what the evidence about Kavanaugh may show displayed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be the worst. No matter what that evidence is, he told the ironically named Values Voter Summit, “We’re going to plow right through it.” One way or the other, this week will say much about just how bad our national swamp really is.