AND THEY JUST KEEP COMING | New Information Regarding Sexual Misconduct Claims Against Brett Kavanaugh | Democrats Call For Kavanaugh’s Impeachment
September 16, 2019
AND THEY JUST KEEP COMING
|On Sunday, The New York Times published an essay adopted from the forthcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation,” by two Times reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. The essay included new information regarding sexual misconduct claims against now-Supreme Court Justice BRETT KAVANAUGH. Sandra E. Garcia with The Times reports that the authors of the new book spent 10 months investigating the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault at the center of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, including one by his former Yale classmate, DEBORAH RAMIREZ.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS
|Garcia with The New York Times goes on to write of DEBORAH RAMIREZ, “She recalled being at a dorm party where participants were drinking heavily and said that Mr. Kavanaugh had thrust his penis in her face, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. While Senate investigators concluded at the time that Ms. Ramirez’s account lacked corroboration, the authors said at least seven people ‘heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge,’ including Ms. Ramirez’s mother and two classmates who learned of it just days after the party. The book also reports that Ms. Ramirez’s lawyers gave the F.B.I. a list of at least 25 people who may have had corroborating evidence, but that the bureau interviewed none of them.”
NOBODY'S PERFECT, I GOTTA WORK IT
|The rollout of the essay and its subsequent coverage from The New York Times was fairly bumpy this weekend. The newspaper had to apologize for a tweet it pushed out to promote its article on the Kavanaugh allegations, and it also had to update and correct the initial report itself.
KNOCK HIM OUT
|Prominent Democrats are calling for BRETT KAVANAUGH to be impeached from SCOTUS following the new allegations of sexual misconduct against him. For example, presidential candidate ELIZABETH WARREN tweeted yesterday that Kavanaugh’s nomination “was rammed through the Senate.” She said, “Confirmation is not exoneration, and these newest revelations are disturbing. Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.”
LET ME SHOW YOU HOW IT'S DONE
|Ian Millhiser for Vox explains that the bar for removing BRETT KAVANAUGH from the Supreme Court may be too high, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be removed at all. He makes note of a “provocative paper” published by Yale law professors Saikrishna Prakash and Steven D. Smith that lays out a road map for removing a federal judge without resorting to the impeachment power. Millhiser reports, “It argues that a provision of the Constitution stating that federal judges and justices ‘shall hold their offices during good behaviour’ is widely misunderstood.” That “good behavior” clause could be the key to removing the brand new justice.
TOP-ED
|Jennifer Rubin with The Washington Post argues, “The latest Kavanaugh revelations, as we predicted, were inevitable.” She says the Kavanaugh mess puts in question the credibility of SCOTUS for as long as he sits on the bench. “If Democrats do win the White House, they may pursue this, or worse, ratchet up the Supreme Court wars by adding seats (Well, Kavanaugh’s vote shouldn’t count! And the Gorsuch seat was illegitimate, too!). The Supreme Court will continue to hemorrhage respect and legitimacy. And the pattern will continue, another institutional casualty in the Trump era.”
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
|For Bloomberg, Greg Stohr and Kimberly Robinson report on JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH’S view of Supreme Court justices, who he sees as neither liberal or conservative. During an interview Friday in his chambers, Gorsuch said that his “originalist” approach toward the Constitution is supported by people “all kinds of different political persuasions.” Stohr and Robinson report, “Legal conservatives in recent decades have embraced originalism, which focuses on the meaning of the Constitution’s words at the time it was adopted. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was an originalist, as is current Justice Clarence Thomas, using that approach to argue for overturning Obamacare, slashing abortion rights, and bolstering gun rights.”
PLAYING POLITICS
|Gorsuch isn’t alone in his defense of the Supreme Court being above the politics of Washington. Adam Liptak with The New York Times points out that the justices in general will “insist that politics plays no role in their decision-making.” But he says that patterns in their voting and the “titanic partisan confirmation battles” that take place to put people on the court tell a very, very different story. And now, there may be a case that tests the view that justices are somehow above politics. Liptak: “The debate over the role politics plays in judging is mostly theoretical. But a petition filed this month by Gov. John C. Carney Jr. of Delaware, a Democrat, makes it concrete. It asks the justices to consider whether states may take account of the political affiliations of judges to try to achieve something like ideological balance on their courts.”