Tornado Alley (PROG)

[BOREALIS]

To Senate Republicans, rushing Kavanaugh through is the only remaining way to block Russia probe

Hunter
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday September 04, 2018 · 4:00 PM CDT

There's a few possible reasons why the Republican-controlled Senate is so insistent on ramming through the Trump nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in as short a time as possible. The dominant theory has been that they need to schedule a vote on Kavanaugh before the contents of some of his papers can be forced into the public. In his role in the Bush White House, Kavanaugh would have been in the midst of discussions on torture and indefinite detention; the involvement of the next Supreme Court Justice in international war crimes would be a bad look.

But is that really the reason for the Republican Senate's fevered urgency? That scenario draws skepticism, if only because there seems to be little immediate danger that Republicans or the Trump White House in particular will release any of those papers, regardless of demands to the contrary.

What is more urgent, however, is the investigation into whether the current Republican president committed crimes prior to or while in office. To say that it is existential, for both the Republican White House and every last Republican senator, is not overstating the case. A probe into whether the Republican presidential campaign willingly coordinated with a Russian espionage effort aimed at throwing the United States presidential elections is ongoing, and has already resulted in numerous indictments. The "president's" longtime personal fixer has pled guilty to federal election crimes—and stated directly, in his plea, that the now-president himself assisted and directed those crimes.

We now know with near-certainty that the Republican candidate committed crimes in his efforts to gain the presidency—and the Republican House and Senate have been publicly frantic in their efforts to block further information of those crimes from coming out.

Brett Kavanaugh is unique among the potential Supreme Court nominees in that he transformed from a partisan investigator serving in the Ken Starr probe of anything and everything related to Bill Clinton to a new George W. Bush-convenient belief that sitting presidents ought not be investigated for crimes at all. If appointed to the court, it is logical to presume that he will bring this new, innovative premise to the Supreme Court itself.

And that, perhaps, explains why the Republican Party is rushing pell-mell to confirm Kavanaugh with a sense of seemingly frantic urgency rather than slowing the process by even a few more weeks.

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/4/1793200/-To-Senate-Republicans-rushing-Kavanaugh-through-is-the-only-remaining-way-to-block-Russia-probe