They want their weapon
by Tom Sullivan
Still from Outbreak (1995).
If on one night every year, you could commit any crime without facing consequences, what would you do?
The line above is the premise of the 2013 movie, The Purge. If one night a year wasn’t enough for you, what you would do is join Delta Kappa Epsilon.
Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer published a report in The New Yorker Sunday night of a second woman (in addition to Christine Blasey Ford) who alleges sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, this time from his freshman year at Yale. Deborah Ramirez, now fifty-three, attended a “drunken dormitory party” at Yale and … read the rest for yourselves. Ramirez now wants the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the events of that night.
Attorney Michael Avenatti followed that by releasing an email he had sent to Mike Davis, Chief Counsel for Nominations for U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Avenatti claims to represent yet another woman (or women) with allegations against Kavanaugh and his friend Mike Judge (named earlier) including, Avenatti teases, multiple witnesses who will corroborate heretofore unreported debauchery and sexual assault of women.
But perhaps the most important takeaway from the Farrow-Mayer report is this:
Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote.
Jennifer Rubin considers the excuses Republicans make for not letting the F.B.I. reopen the background investigation it already performed. “They specialize in going back into a high-level nominee’s distant past to find evidence of wrongdoing,” Rubin writes. “That is literally one of their jobs.” Yet Republicans continue painting this inquiry as a criminal investigation instead of a check on Kavanaugh’s character and veracity.
“There’s no crime scene to process, there are no forensics to evaluate,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told “Face the Nation.”
“It’s too old for criminal trial; it’s 36 years old,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told “Fox News Sunday.” “You couldn’t even get a warrant.”
There is nothing to investigate, in essence. The “case” has gone cold:
“It’s ridiculous to imply there is nothing here to investigate,” says former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance. “The FBI can determine if there is evidence that tends to confirm or refute Dr. Ford’s allegations using the same tools they use successfully in the thousands of background investigations they complete every year.”
In short, the Republicans made a bizarre argument: If you don’t investigate and identify evidence, there is nothing to investigate. Well, if you’re going to take that position, I suppose Ford’s failure to report it when she was about 15 years old is entirely understandable. What was there to investigate? And really, why do background checks because there is no “crime scene” years later? Now, with a second woman and perhaps a third, as Michael Avenatti claims, the necessity of investigation becomes undeniable.
All the more reason for them to block it. They want their weapon.
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