A new sexual misconduct claim against Kavanaugh
What happened
Prominent Democrats called for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s impeachment this week after a new allegation of sexual misconduct emerged from his time at Yale University. President Trump, by contrast, branded the story a “smear” and said Kavanaugh should “start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue.” The New York Times reported that Yale classmate Max Stier told the FBI he saw Kavanaugh’s friends push his penis into a female student’s hand at a “drunken dorm party.” Stier’s account echoes that of Deborah Ramirez, another Yale classmate who said Kavanaugh thrust his penis at her during another college party. A third woman, Christine Blasey Ford, has accused Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed and tearing at her clothes in high school. Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) were among several Democratic presidential candidates to call for Kavanaugh’s impeachment, with Harris describing his confirmation as “a sham.”
Republicans strongly criticized the Times for not noting in its initial story that the woman Stier says he saw Kavanaugh assault declined interviews with the paper’s reporters and has reportedly said she does not recall the incident. Capitol Hill Democratic leaders also resisted the impeachment demand, calling it unrealistic. In addition to presenting the new charge, the Times story, which was based on a new book by two of its reporters, questioned the FBI’s investigation of Ford’s and Ramirez’s allegations, saying the FBI didn’t interview 25 potential witnesses. The Times also said the FBI didn’t interview Stier, and “at least seven people” contemporaneously heard about the incident with Ramirez, despite Republicans’ claim during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing that “no corroboration” existed.
What the editorials said
It’s now clear that the FBI’s Kavanaugh investigation was even “more of a sham than it seemed at the time,” said The Washington Post. But the blame for this “investigative shoddiness” does not reside with the bureau. Republicans limited agents to 10 interviews and “a mere week” to submit their “woefully incomplete report.” The GOP’s goal was not to find out the truth, but to get the political cover it needed to confirm Kavanaugh. The continued smearing of Justice Kavanaugh is part of the “Left’s larger campaign” to sully the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, said The Wall Street Journal. Democrats are infuriated about the current court’s center-right majority and President Trump’s seating of 150 nominees to the federal bench. They’d now “rather attempt a hostile takeover” of the judiciary than “win the old-fashioned way: at the ballot box.”
What the columnists said
It’s clearer than ever that Kavanaugh
“lied under oath during his confirmation hearing,” said Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com. He repeatedly insisted he did not assault Ramirez or Ford and did not engage in any sexual misconduct. He claimed he did not drink excessively, despite numerous references in his high school yearbook to doing exactly that, including “Keg City Club,” “100 Kegs or bust,” and “Beach Week Ralph Club,” as well as the recollections of many high school and college classmates that he became aggressive when drunk. Republicans “just don’t care.”
The New York Times should be ashamed of itself for publishing such a “flimsy, uncorroborated story” about an attack that even the alleged victim doesn’t recall happening, said Rich Lowry in NationalReview.com. But the attacks upon Kavanaugh are not about “evidence or fairness.” Their goal is to undermine his legitimacy and intimidate him into not voting to overturn Roe v. Wade. Ford’s lawyer all but admitted as much in April, when she said, “He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is—we know his character, and we know what motivates him.”
It’s now painfully clear that “every arm of the federal government formally works for Trump,” said Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com. Congressional Republicans crafted a sham process to ensure “that nobody who knew anything” about Kavanaugh’s misconduct “would be interviewed.” The FBI ignored dozens of witnesses. The Justice Department just awarded its second-highest honor to the team of lawyers who shepherded his nomination to confirmation. And now the Supreme Court, instead of checking the president’s power, acts “as a tool to enforce” Trump’s “whims and fancies.”