Impeachment or bust? Democrats have few options on Kavanaugh inquiries

WASHINGTON – Brett M. Kavanaugh looked bewildered. Sen. Kamala Harris looked perturbed but determined. It was hour ten 10 the then-supreme Court nominee’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee early last month, and the California Democrat seemed to have him backed into a corner.

Harris, a former prosecutor, was very much back in a courtroom. She was trying to get her witness, Kavanaugh, to reveal the name – or names – of anyone at the Washington law firm of Trump’s personal attorney with whom she alleged he had discussed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his ongoing Russia election meddling investigation the president almost daily refers to as a “witch hunt.”

But what started as a high-stakes chess match fizzled over 10 meandering minutes into a draw. Harris was unable to get a name from her witness. She never offered one. Nor did she offer any anecdotal evidence that Democratic staffers might have unearthed while vetting the then-federal judge and former George W. Bush White House aide.

Three weeks later, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse held up a placard showing one day from detailed calendars Kavanaugh kept during his high school years: July 1, 1982. The Rhode Island Democrat contended that a description of a beerdrinking gathering corroborated the testimony a day earlier of Christine Blasey Ford, who alleges Kavanaugh drunkenly sexually assaulted her at a house party that summer.

“We know ... Kavanaugh was there because it’s his schedule and here is Judge and here is P.J. Here are all those three named boys and others at a house together just as she said,” Whitehouse said, using a black Sharpie to circle keywords on the calendar for emphasis. “She said Kavanaugh and Judge were drunk and that she had a beer. ‘Skis’ is brewskis, beer. They were drinking, just as she said.”

Left-leaning news outlets and columnists immediately dubbed it something just short of a smoking gun. But, poof, when Whitehouse’s time expired, so, too, did his line of inquiry.

The same was true of Kavanaugh’s first two days before the committee early last month. Several Democrats pressed him hard about his role in crafting controversial terrorist detention and interrogation policies in the Bush White House. Vermont Sen. Patrick J. Leahy was unable to gain much traction on an allegation that Kavanaugh, while in the White House, was privy to Democratic senators’ questions for Bush judicial nominees.

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons pressed Kavanaugh on Sept. 5 about his views on a president’s legal authority to “fire, at will, a prosecutor who is criminally investigating him?” The line on inquiry, Coons noted, reflected Democrats’ concerns that Trump chose Kavanaugh thinking he would provide protection should he fire Mueller and a subsequent case make it to the high court.

“I think all I can say, senator, is that was my view in 1998,” Kavanaugh said of comments he made that year at a Georgetown University forum. But the line of inquiry was never neatly closed, the man who now occupies the ninth seat on the Supreme Court, with his decisive fifth conservative vote, never provided a clear answer.

The exchanges are only a few examples of lines of questioning and evidence presented by Democratic senators during the partisan brawl that was Kavanaugh’s confirmation process that remain open. Few clear answers. And even fewer ways to get them now that Kavanaugh has been confirmed.

Senior Democratic leadership aides demurred when asked what the party can and likely would do to force answers from the justice. Notably, in public comments last week, top Senate Democrats focused on other issues such as Hurricane Michael, health care – even climate change. But their Kavanaugh outrage had largely faded from public comments by the time the chamber adjourned Thursday night for a four-week midterm election break.

Some House Democrats such as New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, in line to become Judiciary chairman if his party wins a majority in November, have floated the idea of investigating Kavanaugh next year. Others are talking impeachment, though House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, likely to regain the speaker’s gavel if Democrats win the House, is advising her members to pump the brakes on impeachment talk. President Donald Trump, center, speaks as Brett Kavanaugh, associate justice of the Supreme Court, left, looks on during a ceremonial swearing-in event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8.