Model Clerks

Kavanaugh Chronicles:  Dr. Blasey Ford, Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser, now seems willing to testify in front of the Senate next week.  Her lawyers have been trying to work out the rules of the road for her appearance.  First and foremost, they say that she will not be able to testify on Monday, the drop dead date that Committee Chairman Grassley set for her appearance, instead they have proposed Thursday.  They also say that her appearance is contingent on the Senate providing her with adequate security, a significant concern for her and probably one for Kavanaugh since both of them have been receiving death threats.  Her lawyers also want Kavanaugh to testify first, and want other witnesses, including Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge, who Dr. Blasey says was present during the assault, to be subpoenaed to testify.  Judge, a recovering alcoholic, has previously said that he has no recollection of the assault or even the party where the assault is alleged to have taken place; however, it’s not clear that he will stick to that story once under oath. Blasey’s lawyers also insist that Kavanaugh be banished from the Senate chamber during her testimony.  Lastly, they insist that the Senators be forced to conduct their own questioning.  That’s a problem for Chairman Grassley since none of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are women.  His plan is to farm the Blasey interrogation out to outside counsel, someone of the female persuasion, in order to avoid having one of his octogenarian members, or one of his other members with octogenarian views, say something unnecessarily hostile to Dr. Blasey,  something that would serve as fodder for the nightly news, internet and twitterverse. There are women on the committee, however all four of them are Democrats.  They include Senators Feinstein, Klobuchar, Harris and Hirono and no doubt each of them are looking forward to skewering Judge Kavanaugh and aren’t looking for any outside counsel to step into their shoes.  As of now, though some progress has been made, final details remain up in the air and it’s not yet clear that either side is prepared to budge from their preferred hearing date.  In other related news, one Facebook poster now denies her assertion that she’d heard some chatter about the Kavanaugh attack back during her school days while another person has told the Huffington Post that parties like the one that Blasey described were the norm back in the day and that alcohol fueled forced sexual encounters were not that unusual. Separately, students at Yale Law school report that Professor Amy Chua, the author of  Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom who serves as a mentor to female law students seeking clerkships, said that it was “no accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks “looked like models.”  She told students hoping to clerk for Kavanaugh that he preferred clerks with a “certain look,” and that they should dress “model-like” in order to make a “good impression” during their interviews. That said, none of the students and none of his clerks report being subjected to any harassment.  Amy Chua stands by her earlier statement that Kavanaugh would be a wonderful addition to the Supreme Court.  However, officials at Yale Law aren’t all that happy with the advice that she’s been giving students, they are now looking into her “coaching.”  In another indication that the Kavanaugh stuff is really getting out of hand, Ed Whelan, president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, is pushing a totally different narrative.  He’s fingered someone else, a Kavanaugh doppelganger, as the person responsible for attacking Dr. Blasey, and has gone as far as to provide that person’s name and contact details to the twitterverse. Whelan may now find himself in court being sued by that doppelganger for defamation.  As to Trump, with both his and Kavanaugh’s popularity ratings heading south, he’s been advised by White House Counsel McGahn and advisor Kellyanne Conway to avoid wading further into the Kavanaugh mess and except for a few comments about Kavanaugh’s wonderful character and a nonsensical suggestion that had the FBI been doing its job it would have investigated the assault accusation 36 years ago when it happened he has kept relatively quiet.  Instead he’s redirected his energies elsewhere.  Last night he was in Vegas campaigning for Senator Dean Heller who is facing a strong challenge from Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Rosen.  While there, Trump again railed against Congress for failing to fund his wall. To that end, he’s threatening to shut the government down on September 30 if the budget isn’t reworked to provide him with wall cash, probably just more of his buffoonery than anything else and certainly not something that Republican leadership wants to see in the run up to the midterms.   

Michael Cohen Update:  ABC news reports that Trump’s one time lawyer/fixer has now spent many hours with members of Special Counsel Mueller’s team spilling his guts about  Trump’s business dealings in Russia.  Though no one from Mueller’s team has corroborated that report because no one from Mueller’s team ever talks to the press, Cohen’s legal spinmeister Lanny Davis confirmed the ABC report by tweeting “Good for @michaelcohen212 in providing critical information to the #muellerinvestigation without a cooperation agreement. No one should question his honesty, veracity or loyalty to his #family and #country over @potus @realdonaldtrump.”  Despite Lanny Davis’s assertion that Michael Cohen is pure as the driven snow, it’s highly likely that Cohen is cooperating with Mueller mostly in the hopes of reducing his prison time and that anything he says will have to be corroborated by others.