Dianne Feinstein Rode One Court Fight to the Senate. Another Has Left Her Under Siege.
"Christine Blasey Ford’s Lawyer Issues Scathing Letter in Response to Judiciary Committee’s Deadlines"
Dianne Feinstein’s anger over the treatment of Anita Hill in 1991 helped fuel her rise to the Senate.CreditCreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
By Nicholas Fandos
Sept. 21, 2018
WASHINGTON — In October 1991, Dianne Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco, joined a silent crowd gathered around a television at Heathrow Airport in London to watch an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee question a young law professor about allegations that a Supreme Court nominee had sexually harassed her.
Enraged by what she saw in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, Ms. Feinstein ran for and won a Senate seat in California the next fall — and shortly after, a spot on the Judiciary Committee.
“Every woman that watched that changed,” Ms. Feinstein said in an interview last month with “The Daily,” a New York Times podcast, .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/podcasts/the-daily/women-midterm-elections.html .. reflecting on what became known as the Year of the Woman. “I think change happened at that moment. What I am thinking to myself is, ‘Can I change this?’”
Twenty-seven years later, Ms. Feinstein, now the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, appears to finally have a chance to alter the course not just of a Supreme Court nomination but also a churning cultural conversation about women and sexual assault. But “change” is proving to be very complicated.
By acknowledging in vague terms the existence of a letter accusing Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault — a letter she had held secretly for weeks — Ms. Feinstein helped precipitate the outing of a reluctant accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, just days before a confirmation vote. In doing so, she has brought back to the forefront many of the same themes that Ms. Hill’s testimony raised a quarter century ago, and exposed herself to withering criticism, perhaps the worst of her Senate career.
Even before the letter emerged, Ms. Feinstein had found herself criticized by liberal Democrats who believed she had been too timid and deferential in her treatment of Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee.
“We need a senator from California who will stand up and #RESIST not #ASSIST,” State Senator Kevin de León, who is challenging Ms. Feinstein for her Senate seat, said after she had all but apologized to Judge Kavanaugh for the liberal protesters who interrupted his confirmation hearings.
Ms. Feinstein, at 85 the oldest member of the Senate, has at times appeared bewildered by the swirl of attention. Surrounded earlier this week by dozens of reporters as she moved through the Capitol, she waved her hands as if to cut off the questioning. At another point, she told a Fox News reporter on Tuesday, “I can’t say everything’s truthful” in Dr. Blasey’s account. She later cleaned up the remark, but not before the White House seized on it.
Now, as Dr. Blasey, a California university professor, appears willing once again to come forward with testimony against Judge Kavanaugh, Ms. Feinstein faces unrelenting questions about her handling of the matter, and perhaps more pressing ones about how to navigate what comes next.
“When Senator Feinstein sat with Judge Kavanaugh for a long period of time — a long, long meeting — she had this letter,” President Trump said on Tuesday. “Why didn’t she bring it up? Why didn’t the Democrats bring it up then? Because they obstruct and because they resist.”
VIDEO - 2:48 Trump on Kavanaugh: ‘I Feel So Badly for Him’ During a joint news conference with President Andrzej Duda of Poland, President Trump reaffirmed his defense of his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual assault. Sept. 18, 2018 Image by Doug Mills/The New York Times
Republican senators, wary of attacking Dr. Blasey directly, have piled on Ms. Feinstein instead, dispensing with much of the courtesy typically extended to a fellow lawmaker over what they see as a cynical 11th-hour effort to derail Judge Kavanaugh: “An ambush attack,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota. A “drive by,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
Even Ms. Feinstein’s hometown newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, blasted the senator’s approach as “unfair,” specifically her release last week of a cryptic statement that she had referred a “matter to federal investigative authorities .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-dianne-feinstein.html ,” without saying what the matter was or whom it involved.
Ms. Feinstein in 1985, when she was the mayor of San Francisco.CreditBoris Yurchenko/Associated Press
Ms. Feinstein has denied that she calculated much of anything — she was simply honoring Dr. Blasey’s wish for privacy. Aides say that in private, Ms. Feinstein has been taken aback by the intensity and repetition of the criticism, but expressed confidence she handled the situation correctly. Dr. Blasey’s lawyers and outside groups that work on women’s rights issues have agreed.
“President Trump, Dr. Blasey Ford did not want her story of sexual assault to be public,” Ms. Feinstein wrote Wednesday on Twitter .. https://twitter.com/SenFeinstein/status/1042417699274600448 . “She requested confidentiality and I honored that. It wasn’t until the media outed her that she decided to come forward. You may not respect women and the wishes of victims, but I do.”
A spokesman declined to make Ms. Feinstein available for an interview, but in statements, she has given Dr. Blasey forceful backing, accusing Republicans of short-circuiting a proper investigation on the matter by rushing a hearing.
It is an odd position for Ms. Feinstein, a patrician Democrat who prizes her reputation as a dealmaker and puts relationships with Republicans above partisan credentials. In August, when Mr. Grassley and his wife celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary, Ms. Feinstein sent a white orchid — the kind of charm that typically accompanies her overtures to Republican senators.
For more liberal Democrats who have rallied around hard-nosed resistance to Mr. Trump, the results are often frustrating. The senator’s apparent apology to Judge Kavanaugh for the protesters, for instance, drew sharp dismissals from liberals on Twitter such as Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Leah Litman @LeahLitman
Can someone ping me when Senator @maziehirono is up? Can someone also ping me when @SenFeinstein is convinced to retire? 1:23 AM - Sep 6, 2018 tweet link
Ms. Feinstein first learned of Dr. Blasey’s story in late July, when Representative Anna Eshoo, a fellow California Democrat, hand-delivered the letter to the senator’s office in Washington. Ms. Feinstein’s staff asked the Senate Ethics Committee whether the senator could hire an independent, outside counsel to represent Dr. Blasey. But that would have required the signoff of two Republican chairmen, a violation of Ms. Feinstein’s pledge of confidentiality, so the effort was dropped.
Around the same time, Dr. Blasey retained a lawyer, Debra Katz, with whom Feinstein staff members repeatedly consulted in the ensuing weeks to see if the accuser would go public. She declined, even as senators sounded alarms about the implications of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation on women’s rights.
“Feinstein was really an honest broker in this in saying: ‘These are serious allegations, and I will do what you would like. I will respect your decision,’” Ms. Katz said in an interview.
But as Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings barreled ahead, and speculation about the letter began to spread across Capitol Hill, the calculus changed. Under pressure from other Democratic senators on the committee, several of whom felt any serious allegation must be publicized, Ms. Feinstein called a meeting on Sept. 12 to brief them on its contents for the first time.
She sent it to the F.B.I. that night, and issued her cryptic statement the next day acknowledging publicly for the first time that she had received “information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.” Within hours, news outlets, including The Times, reported the broad outlines of its contents. On Sunday, Dr. Blasey identified herself to The Washington Post.
Some committee Democrats privately vented that Ms. Feinstein should have found a way forward earlier with a potentially nomination-changing accusation. But in the days since the accusation became public, Democrats have closed ranks.
“Senator Feinstein faced a choice that none of us would want to, and I think she handled it responsibly,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the panel. “What was Senator Feinstein to do at this point, ignore her request, make it public to the embarrassment of her and her family?”
Outside of written statements, Ms. Feinstein has done little to defend her thinking. And the senator has only muddled her own case when speaking with reporters this week — sometimes despite reminders from staff members that she need not answer questions.
When, for example, one reporter asked Ms. Feinstein as she entered the Senate on Monday evening if she had had any discussions with Dr. Blasey after receiving the letter, the senator could not recall.
“I’ll have to look back,” she said. “I don’t know right now.”
Then she walked out of reach.
Jonathan Martin, Catie Edmondson, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
Sideshow Ed Whelan and his Kavanaugh Doppelgängers may be connected to Orrin Hatch
"Christine Blasey Ford’s Lawyer Issues Scathing Letter in Response to Judiciary Committee’s Deadlines"
annieli Community Friday September 21, 2018 · 1:35 PM AUSEST
[...]
There are a number of tweets stating that the National Review’s Ed Whelan might be part of a coordinated effort to disinform the public, and perhaps accuse an innocent man of a crime to ensure the nomination of a SCOTUS justice.
Thus triggered all manner of Scooby-doo speculation. Are there no coincidences?
Brett Kavanaugh’s habit of dissembling makes it hard to take his word over Ford’s -- "Christine Blasey Ford’s Lawyer Issues Scathing Letter in Response to Judiciary Committee’s Deadlines"
From his public remarks to his congressional testimony, he’s awfully dishonest.
By Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias matt@vox.com Sep 24, 2018, 10:20am EDT
President Donald Trump (R), Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh (2nd R), his wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh and their daughters, Margaret and Liza, stand with Trump after the president announced the judge as his nominee to the United States Supreme Court on July 9, 2018. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Given the nature of the evidence at hand, it’s certainly possible that Kavanaugh is telling the truth about this. But I don’t believe he is.
I believe Ford and Ramirez, in part, because I do tend to “believe women.” Unreported sexual assault is common, and there is no conceivable motive for a false report in this case. Human memory and eyewitness testimony are unreliable, but researchers say the central fact of a traumatic event involving a previously known assailant .. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/20/17879768/memory-brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-psychology .. is the kind of thing one is most likely to remember correctly.
It is, however, on some level, an inherently he-said, she-said kind of situation, and Kavanaugh rightly could not be sent to jail on the basis of this level of evidence. A promotion to a Supreme Court seat, however, seems like a place where a preponderance of evidence standard could prevail instead.
There’s a fundamental problem for Kavanaugh in a he-said, she-said context. There is one thing that I — who, like most Americans, did not follow his career pre-selection — really know about Brett Kavanaugh: He is willing to fib to get a Supreme Court seat.
Kavanaugh tried to bullshit his way into selection
When President Donald Trump announced Kavanaugh’s selection to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, these were the first three sentences Kavanaugh uttered to introduce himself to the American public:
-- Mr. President, thank you. Throughout this process, I’ve witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary. No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination. --
Neither the claim that Trump appreciates the vital role of the American judiciary nor the claim that he consulted unusually widely in making his choice is true. What’s more troubling in some ways is that neither claim is even a proper lie intended to trick people.
Kavanaugh was, instead, offering what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt termed “bullshit .. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15631710/trump-bullshit .” The bullshitter, as Frankfurt wrote in his seminal essay on the subject, “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”
In Kavanaugh’s case, the purpose was to butter up Trump. After Trump selected Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy left by Senate Republicans’ refusal to allow a vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination, Senate Democrats spent a fair amount of time during Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings asking slightly troll-y questions about Trump’s personal contempt for the independent judiciary and its role in the American constitutional system.
Gorsuch, befitting a jurist with a sense of personal dignity, denounced some of Trump’s excesses in this regard. We’ve later learned that this angered Trump .. https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/19/politics/donald-trump-neil-gorsuch-analysis/index.html , and he contemplated trying to spike the nomination, only to be talked out of it by White House aides.
Kavanaugh, having read the reporting on Gorsuch, and likely being aware that Trump has become more self-confident over time and now has more mastery over the institutional Republican Party, displayed considerably more loyalty to Trump and less personal dignity .. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/kavanaugh-trump-sycophancy.html .. both in his introductory remarks and in his subsequent testimony.
The buttering-up of Trump is not, viewed in isolation, the worst thing in the world. But in some ways, its sheer triviality speaks volumes about Kavanaugh’s character. By the time he delivered those introductory remarks, Trump had already picked him. But in addition to whatever flattery he offered Trump in private, he was so thirsty for the president’s approval that he chose to gild the lily in his public remarks and then reemphasize loyalty to Trump during sworn testimony.
The impression it creates is of a man who is willing to say things that aren’t true to advance his career prospects in really marginal ways. A reasonable observer would conclude that he’d be willing to say things that aren’t true when his fate is truly on the line. And, indeed, that’s what we’ve seen him do in the past.
Kavanaugh misled Congress repeatedly in 2004
Kavanaugh has been bullshitting recently, but at other times, he seemingly did seek to outright mislead people.
During his 2004 confirmation hearings for a seat on the DC Circuit, Kavanaugh was asked about his role as a White House staffer in the effort to get William Pryor confirmed for a different appeals court seat.
-- The best-case scenario is that Kavanaugh, who is up for a seat on the nation’s highest court, has a glaring lack of curiosity or a superficial level of discernment. The worst-case scenario is that he has been feigning ignorance since his first confirmation hearing in the Senate in April 2004, which was held after the Senate sergeant-at-arms had released his report documenting Miranda’s serial theft. --
The overall impression one gets of Kavanaugh is of a man who is not that scrupulous in his recollections and who is very willing to say things that are false or misleading to both Congress and the public in order to get ahead.
Don’t lie to Congress and the public if you want people to believe you
The past week has seen a lot of takes about due process, presumptions of innocence, and other questions relating to how we should think about the situation at hand, in which Ford has a credible accusation but no contemporaneous witnesses or real proof.
The answer as a matter of criminal law is fairly clear: Victims are not going to be able to get perpetrators sent to jail on the basis of this kind of evidence. While that’s unfortunate in many ways, there’s also no way around it consistent with the principles of justice and due process.
But as a political matter, we have a different situation.
It sounds a little old-fashioned in the Trump era, but you are genuinely not supposed to pull up to a microphone in the White House and say stuff that isn’t true. And you’re not supposed to mislead Congress — even if you manage to do so in ways that don’t meet the legal standard for perjury .. https://www.vox.com/2018/9/7/17829320/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-hearing-perjury .
Why not? Well, on one level, because truthfulness and honest, decent behavior are supposed to be their own rewards in public life. But there’s another reason to develop a track record for honesty and forthrightness, even when telling the truth is inconvenient: The time may come when you find yourself asking skeptical people to take your word for it.
It’s obviously possible that Ford is lying for no reason or suffering from some kind of inexplicable confusion, and that her revelations then prompted a misleading or misremembered story from Ramirez. But it’s certain that after bullshitting about Trump, dissembling about Pryor, misleading about Miranda, and offering an implausible plea of ignorance about Kozinski, Kavanaugh isn’t a trustworthy figure.
That’s not enough to prosecute him — and realistically probably not enough to impeach him, even though he deserves it over the congressional testimony alone. But it’s ample grounds to deny him a seat on the Supreme Court.
Maybe it's just me but if you are "investigating" something which has an actual living eyewitness, that calling the eyewitness to testify is a total imperative? And anything less is malpractice, clear and simple? The very definition of corrupt. P - Dr. Ford was credible and deserved better than being left without being able to have a shot at corroboration. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143851582
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