Jeff Flake’s Confirmation Circus Outgoing senator earns a place in infamy as he betrays justice — and fellow Republicans.Matthew Vadum
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271486/jeff-flakes-confirmation-circus-matthew-vadum
The Senate Judiciary Committee may have approved the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh on a straight party-line vote Friday, but the confirmation process will not wrap up until the end of the week at the earliest.
And Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the high court remains in doubt. If Kavanaugh fails to be confirmed, the proximate cause will be the treachery of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).
It’s the same old sad, tired story of Republicans snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With the midterm elections approaching and the possibility of Democrats recapturing the Senate looming, every delay only works to Democrats’ advantage. The longer the process drags on, the more fake victims with implausible stories can surface to bear false witness against Kavanaugh. Putting the final Senate vote off only helps the bad guys.
The Supreme Court will be shorthanded this morning as it begins hearing cases in its new term. It normally has a complement of nine justices but with Anthony Kennedy’s retirement July 31, which cleared the way for Kavanaugh’s nomination, there have been only eight justices. Roughly speaking there is a 4-to-4 liberal to conservative ideological split on the court. Democrats are trying to drag the confirmation process into the next Congress where they hope to seize control from Republicans. Election Day is November 6. The GOP currently controls the Senate, which has the final say on judicial nominations, by an uncomfortably close margin of 51 to 49.
Things had gone well for Kavanaugh Thursday at an evidentiary hearing pitting him against attempted rape accuser Christine Blasey Ford, who made herself look ridiculous on national television. Ford can’t remember much if anything of the high school party she alleges took place more than 30 years ago. The only thing she claims to remember with perfect certainty is that Kavanaugh, the would-be ninth member of the Supreme Court, somehow tried to rape her. She can’t remember when or where the party was, how she got there, how she got home after, or much else. The witnesses she claims were there for the party either deny her claims or don’t remember being there. It is obvious to anyone who watched the hearing that the left-wing activist is lying.
After the hearing adjourned, Kavanaugh should have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the relevant votes scheduled in the Senate, and early this week the nominee could have been confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court and sworn in.
It was not to be.
Just as the crazy Democrat-caused obstructionist chaos appeared to be at an end, Flake decided to keep it going, announcing after the committee vote that he would insist that the FBI embark on yet another pointless FBI probe of the nominee. The real purpose of the new investigation is dilatory. No one expects the FBI to find anything new or anything damning against Kavanaugh. But the Left is already saying the delay won’t be long enough and looking for excuses to keep on delaying a Senate confirmation vote for any reason at all, no matter how specious.
According to the Washington Post, White House spokesman Raj Shah said Sunday that Democrats are “merely attempting to further delay and politicize” the probe. President Trump tweeted Sunday that Democrats are “are starting to put out the word that the ‘time’ and ‘scope’ of FBI looking into Judge Kavanaugh and witnesses is not enough. Hello! For them, it will never be enough — stay tuned and watch!”
After the Republican-controlled committee voted 11 to 10, as expected, to favorably recommend Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate, making approval by that body seem more likely than it had seemed before the vote, America’s worst senator whose remaining time in office may now be measured in weeks, betrayed his constituents and his fellow Republicans by blackmailing Senate leadership. Before the committee adjourned, he aired his ridiculous demand that Kavanaugh be subjected to yet another FBI background check – the seventh such investigation for the judge.
RINO holdouts such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Me.), whose votes Republicans cannot afford to lose in a 51 to 49 Senate, quickly fell in line with the request for a new FBI investigation.
Flake’s spectacular cave-in to the Left same after professional leftist operatives and his good buddy, the humorless leftist Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), vented their frustrations and yelled at him.
“The country is being ripped apart here,” said Flake, without acknowledging that he was helping rip it apart.
After declaring the confirmation process “a total sham” the day before, President Trump quietly acceded to the request for another FBI probe into the allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh now leveled by three women. The investigation is supposed to be “limited in scope,” whatever that means.
Democrats want to extract more evidence from Mark Judge, a high school friend of Kavanaugh whom Ford claimed was present in the room when she was allegedly assaulted. Judge said he does not remember any such incident but informed the committee by letter that he would cooperate with law enforcement assigned to investigate “confidentially.”
Kavanaugh said he will cooperate. “I’ve done everything they have requested and will continue to cooperate,” he said.
Senators supporting Kavanaugh let their views be known on Sunday morning talk shows.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) demanded Democrats be investigated for misconduct during the confirmation process. He also asked “who in Feinstein’s office” referred Ford to her left-wing activist attorney Debra Katz.
“We will investigate who in Dianne Feinstein’s office referred Dr. Ford to Mrs. Katz. It’s illegal, inappropriate in the Senate. The FBI will be a supplemental background investigation. I’ll call for an investigation on who betrayed Dr. Ford’s trust. Who in Feinstein’s office betrayed her trust, why Dr. Ford didn’t know we were willing to come to California? We’ll do a wholesale investigation of what I think was a despicable process.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also vowed that Ford’s lawyers and Feinstein’s staffers would be investigated. Ford’s lawyers “who lied to her and did not tell her that the committee staff was willing to go to California to interview her” will “face a D.C. bar investigation into their misconduct.”
Of course, probably nothing will come of these investigations. Even if something does happen to Ford’s attorneys, they will view any potential financial penalty as a mere speeding ticket, the cost of doing the business of social justice. They’ll become heroes to the Left and will embark on profitable speaking tours at universities across America. George Soros and his friends will make sure they’re properly taken care off. But it doesn’t hurt to put left-wing misdeeds on the record.
In other post-hearing news, late Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick is running into problems. She claimed a few days ago that in the early 1980s Kavanaugh and others spiked the drinks of young women at high school parties with intoxicants to clear the way for them to be gang-raped. Incredibly, Swetnick said in a sworn statement that she witnessed gang rapes at these parties –and was gang-raped herself— but kept on attending them anyway.
Swetnick, it turns out, has credibility problems. In a 2000 lawsuit former employer Webtrends alleged she falsely claimed to be a Johns Hopkins University alumna and fabricated prior employment. Swetnick engaged in unwelcome sexual innuendo with two male employees at a business meal in the presence of clients, according to the company. In 2001 her former boyfriend Richard Vinneccy reportedly filed a restraining order against her in Florida after their four-year relationship ended. “She was threatening my family, threatening my wife and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time,” Vinneccy said. “I know a lot about her. She’s not credible at all,” he said. “Not at all.”
Swetnick is represented, of course, by creepy porn lawyer and Democrat operative Michael Avenatti.
In a separate development, the Senate Judiciary Committee has asked the Department of Justice to criminally investigate a man who falsely informed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) office that Kavanaugh raped a woman on a boat in Rhode Island in 1985 and then recanted his story after Kavanaugh denied the claim. The accuser’s name had been blacked out in official documents but the Washington Times identified him as Jeffrey Catalan.
And so the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus continues with no end in sight.
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