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A must. Steve Schmidt On Trump Attacking Dr. Blasey Ford: Contemptible And Vulgar | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

MSNBC
Published on Oct 2, 2018

Political veteran & former Republican Steve Schmidt reacts to Trump's attacks on the testimony by Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idSANnejK5Y

Decent people on one side. Indecent people with Trump. Steve Schmidt nails it.

Video mention:

I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Confirm Him

This is an article I never imagined myself writing, that I never wanted to write, that I wish I could not write.

Oct 2, 2018
Benjamin Wittes
Editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

[...]

The Brett Kavanaugh who showed up to Thursday’s hearing is a man I have never met, whom I have never even caught a glimpse of in 20 years of knowing the person who showed up to the first hearing. I dealt with Kavanaugh during the Starr investigation, which I covered for the Washington Post editorial page and about which I wrote a book. I dealt with him when he was in the White House counsel’s office and working on judicial nominations and post–September 11 legal matters. Since his confirmation to the D.C. Circuit, he has been a significant voice on a raft of issues I work on. In all of our interactions, he has been a consummate professional. The allegations against him shocked me very deeply, but not quite so deeply as did his presentation. It was not just an angry and aggressive version of the person I have known. It seemed like a different person altogether.

[...]

Her story is also corroborated, imperfectly but perceptibly, by Kavanaugh’s high-school calendar. Ford describes the attack as taking place at a gathering at which at least four boys—Kavanaugh, Judge, Patrick (P.J.) Smythe, and a boy whose name Ford could not remember—and one girl, Leland Keyser, were drinking beer. Ford specifically allowed for the possibility that there might have been others present as well.

Kavanaugh’s calendar entry for the evening of July 1, 1982, contains an entry that reads, “Go to Timmy’s for skis with Judge, Tom, P.J., Bernie and Squi.” In the hearing, Kavanaugh acknowledged that “skis” in this entry referred to “brewskis,” or beer; that P.J. was Smythe; that Judge was Mark Judge; and that “Squi” was a boy who, Ford had earlier testified, just happened to have been someone she “went out with” for a short time. The calendar entry does not include Ford or Keyser, so the corroboration is far from perfect. It also includes people not mentioned by Ford. Then again, the degree of overlap with Ford’s story is striking. In the summer in which Ford alleges that Kavanaugh attacked her at an evening get-together with a small group of boys drinking beers, his calendar identifies an evening get-together with a small group of boys drinking beers, including three of the boys named by Ford, along with one she dated. Why exactly Kavanaugh imagines his calendar entries to be powerfully exculpatory I am really not sure.

Ford’s story also finds some degree of corroboration in Mark Judge’s employment history. Ford claims that she saw Judge some weeks after the alleged attack at the Safeway where he worked and that he was visibly uncomfortable seeing her. The Washington Post verified from Judge’s own memoir that he was, in fact, working at a grocery story as a bagger in the relevant period. Assuming the FBI investigation firms that up, it would offer another data point tending to corroborate her account’s consistency with verifiable facts.

On the other side of the ledger is Kavanaugh’s testimony, and here we cannot be quite so confident that the witness was being candid.

[...]

Over the weekend, I listened to a number of podcasts in which liberals mocked Kavanaugh as an entitled white male refusing to face accountability for what he had done. I find the tone of these discussions nauseating—undetained by the possibility of error. I, like Jeff Flake, am haunted by doubt, by the certainty of uncertainty and the consequent possibility of injustice. I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about Oliver Cromwell’s famous letter to the Church of Scotland in which he implored, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” I also spent some time with Learned Hand’s similar maxim, “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” We all need to think it possible that we may be mistaken; we all need to be not too sure that we are right.

But my bottom line is the opposite of the one Flake expressed in his statement: Faced with credible allegations of serious misconduct against him, Kavanaugh behaved in a fashion unacceptable in a justice, it seems preponderantly likely he was not candid with the Senate Judiciary Committee on important matters, and the risk of Ford’s allegations being closer to the truth than his denial of them is simply too high to place him on the Supreme Court.

We are in a political environment in which there are no rules, no norms anymore to violate. There is only power, and the individual judgments of individual senators—facing whatever political pressures they face, calculating political gain however they do it, and consulting their consciences to the extent they have them.

As much as I admire Kavanaugh, my conscience would not permit me to vote for him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-wouldnt-confirm-brett-kavanaugh/571936/

And

Mimi Rocah and Daniel S. Goldman GOP prosecutor Rachel Mitchell's critique of Christine Blasey Ford is incomplete and flawed

It's one thing to misleadingly frame Dr. Ford’s allegations as a case of “he said, she said.” It's something else to ignore what “he” actually said.

Oct.03.2018 / 4:43 AM GMT+10

[...]

Finally, Mitchell’s analysis ignores the fact that some corroboration already does exist. First, Kavanaugh’s own calendars show that during the time period Ford reported he socialized with the several of the key people she singles out. In fact, all of the boys that Dr. Ford can identify from that party were in Kavanaugh’s calendar on July 1, 1982. Second, both Kavanaugh and Ford’s families were members of a country club where Ford says she had been before the attack, which is consistent with her testimony that she was in her bathing suit during the attack. Third, statements in his own yearbook and by high school and college classmates point to a man who drank excessively and was an aggressive drunk, which is also consistent with Ford’s testimony and the nature of the assault. Finally, Ford’s statements in 2012 and 2013 are corroboration for her Senate testimony that would be admissible in a court of law.

Rachel Mitchell may be a very fine prosecutor. But her one-sided, misleading memo draws broad conclusions without any foundation, doing a great disservice not only to the reputation of prosecutors and trained investigators everywhere but also to this confirmation process.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/kavanaugh-hearing-prosecutor-rachel-mitchell-s-critique-dr-ford-incomplete-ncna915896

Surely, if the waverers, and others, are aware of the content of articles as these, Kavanaugh and McConnell cannot be successful in the confirmation
of this man who undoubtedly was picked, in part at least, because he has said recently a sitting president should not be criminally investigated.