For Dems, focus shifts to honesty
WASHINGTON — Democratic efforts to highlight sexual assault charges that are more than 30 years old have been dismissed by supporters of Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the dredgings of ancient history. But the judge’s response to those accusations has raised new issues that go to the core of who President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is right now: his truthfulness, his partisanship and his temperament.
“The issues of credibility and temperament are not something that happened 30 years ago; they’re about Judge Kavanaugh today and how he is as a 53-year-old,” Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday, giving a hint of the Democrats’ strategy.
Kavanaugh’s opening statement suggested the inquiry into Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation was motivated by Democratic bitterness over the 2016 election and his role in the investigation of former President Bill Clinton.
Kavanaugh’s allies say Democrats are raising issues of character because they know the FBI will not be able to prove allegations of sexual assault.
At his first Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sept. 4, Kavanaugh portrayed himself as a neutral arbiter of the law who is above politics, telling the Judiciary Committee that the Supreme Court “must never be viewed as a partisan institution.”
But last week he took the gloves off, ripping into Democrats for what he called “a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election” and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a member of the Judiciary Committee, seized on those comments Monday as she laced into Kavanaugh in a speech on the Senate floor.
“We all saw something about Judge Kavanaugh’s temperament and character that day that should disqualify him from serving on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Hirono said. “He was angry. He was belligerent. He was partisan.”