Brett Kavanaugh fights back
means nothing: As Judge Kavanaugh pointed out, Ms. Keyser “said under penalty of felony she does not know me, does not ever recall being at a party with me ever.” Ms. Ford was too young to drive but cannot recall how she got there or how she left — a big deal for those of us who remember the days before cellphones or Uber. She cannot recall whose house it was; she cannot recall the date.
The burden of proof is not on Judge Kavanaugh to prove he didn’t do it. He cannot prove a negative. In the United States of America, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But apparently not in the United States Senate. Asked before the hearing whether Judge Kavanaugh deserved a presumption of innocence, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. said, “There’s no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.” That is simply un-American.
“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” Judge Kavanaugh declared. He’s right: “The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy. Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything, to block my confirmation.”
He called out Democratic committee members — like Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who called him “evil” — and accused them of unleashing the torrent of unfounded allegations. “Your words have meaning,” Judge Kavanaugh reminded them. “Millions of Americans listen carefully to you. Given comments like those, is it any surprise that people have been willing to do anything to make any physical threat against my family, to send any violent email to my wife, to make any kind of allegation against me and against my friends? To blow me up and take me down?”
The result, he said, is the “circus” we witnessed in the past 10 days. That is a tragedy, not just for him and for Ms. Ford, who, as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., said, is “as much a victim” as Judge Kavanaugh. It is a tragedy for our democracy. Because after watching Judge Kavanaugh be put through the gantlet of personal destruction, good people of both parties will hesitate to answer the call to serve, and, as Judge Kavanaugh said, “I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.”
Taken aback by Judge Kavanaugh’s decision to call them out, and without any actual evidence to discuss, Democrats were reduced to asking Judge Kavanaugh about references to vomiting and flatulence in his high school year book. Seriously? The world’s greatest deliberative body has been reduced to this? As for Democrats’ calls for an FBI investigation, their interest in an investigation is not to get to the truth; it’s to stop Judge Kavanaugh at all costs. If they wanted the bureau to review Ms. Ford’s allegation, they should have come forward with that request more than a month ago.
Mr. Graham rocked the hearing room when he asked Judge Kavanaugh whether he knew when he met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Aug. 20 that she had had these allegations for 20 days and had recommended a lawyer to Ms. Ford. The point, as Mr. Graham said, is that Democrats only want to drag this out so there is time for more fake accusers to come out of the woodwork. They want to run out the clock until the midterm elections, when they hope to retake the Senate and block President Donald Trump from putting anyone on the Supreme Court. And in the process, they want to “destroy this guy’s life,” Mr.Graham said.
Regardless of whether he is confirmed, Judge Kavanaugh said, they have already done that. “I’ll never get my reputation back,” Judge Kavanaugh said. “My life is permanently and totally altered.” Whether our democracy is permanently altered depends on whether the Senate rejects this campaign of character assassination and confirms Judge Kavanaugh. We’ll find out the answer shortly.