A new controversy involving the President’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, has made its way through not just the Senate, but all the way to the FBI.
A letter that had been in the private possession of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, sent to her by US Rep. Anna Eshoo of CA’s 18th District, has now been forwarded to the nation’s top law enforcement agency over concerns that Kavanaugh may have engaged in improper conduct of a nature wholly unsuitable to any judicial nominee.
Initially protecting the letter as a highly sensitive topic, even shielding it from her fellow Democrats on the Judiciary Committee out of regard for the victim, Feinstein revealed the contents of the letter Wednesday night to her colleagues, flagging it for the FBI Thursday morning.
The allegations were made by a former high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s and sent to Rep. Eshoo by someone who put the woman’s account into letter form for her, out of privacy concerns.
The attorney said to be representing the victim is Debra Katz, a high-profile advocate for victims in the #MeToo movement.
The White House, while not expressly denying any of the allegations, has already released a statement from spokeswoman Kerri Kupec:
Throughout his confirmation process, Judge Kavanaugh has had 65 meetings with senators — including with Senator Feinstein — sat through over 30 hours of testimony, addressed over 2,000 questions in a public setting and additional questions in a confidential session. Not until the eve of his confirmation has Sen. Feinstein or anyone raised the specter of new ‘information’ about him.”
The news hits hard as Kavanaugh was already forced to concede Wednesday that he had expressly refused to shake grieving Parkland father Fred Guttenberg’s hand, believing he was “a protester.” Trump supporters eager to see the President’s nominee confirmed had earlier defended Kavanaugh’s slight against Guttenberg, despite video evidence of him turning away in disdain.
Now the Judiciary Committee has announced that the confirmation vote will be delayed for one week — only — after the Republican chair of the Committee, Chuck Grassley, cheated his colleagues out of normal procedures by simply declaring their vote to adjourn “out of order,” then “holding over” the confirmation vote — which only one Senator may do once the vote comes up on the Committee’s agenda as Kavanaugh did last Thursday — and depriving Democrats unfairly of a chance to delay the vote at least one more week.
The rush to confirm Kavanaugh is unprecedented in the history of Supreme Court nominations, and although Republicans are eager to criticize the process as Democratic obstruction, the documents and questioning that the GOP have prevented Democrats from seeing or performing will forever leave a stain on Kavanaugh’s seat, should he reach the nation’s highest court.
Featured image via screen capture
