Rosenstein and Kavanaugh are Deadish

Kavanaugh Calamity: When I started writing this yesterday, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was the only woman publicly accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sex abuse, but now there are two, and, if he’s to be believed, Stormy lawyer Michael Avenatti is representing an as yet unnamed woman who claims that Kavanaugh and some of his friends were known to target vulnerable women with the help of alcohol and drugs during their student days.  Last night Ronan Farrow, the MeToo whisperer, and Jane Mayer, The New Yorker’s respected investigative reporter, published a story detailing accusations by woman number two, Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s.  Essentially, Ramirez asserts that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during one of those alcohol infused parties and though no one else corroborates her account, the two cite other classmates who say that Kavanaugh was known to be a heavy drinker and a serious partier during his college days and that such behavior was most definitely possible.  Apparently, Republican leadership has known about Ramirez for a few days, which is part of why Senators McConnell and Grassley had resisted delaying his confirmation process to provide time for  Dr. Blasey to testify.  Trump, who broke his moratorium on critical Blasey tweets on Friday by saying if she had really been attacked she or her parents would have filed a police complaint at the time was made aware of Ramirez’s existence before the New Yorker article was published.  He remains all in on Kavanaugh because what’s a few harassment claims among friends, especially if those friends are advocates of absolute presidential power.  If this was just about Judge Kavanaugh it would be bad enough, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the accusations against Kavanaugh are just the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg that digs deep into the Republican party which isn’t to say that Democrats are angels, they are confronting their own Keith Ellison problem, but this group of clowns rots from Trump’s crown on down.  We may never know with certainty what happened to Dr. Blasey during that long ago party in Maryland, but its fair to say that her claim that she was attacked by Judge Kavanaugh is credible and that Ramirez’s story also rings true.  That Dr. Blasey told her story to her therapist long before Kavanaugh was a Supreme Court nominee and her naming of a witness, something that sex abuse experts say doesn’t happen when accusations are invented, bolsters her allegation.  Though it would be a huge stretch to suggest that at this late date there would ever be sufficient evidence to convict Kavanaugh in a criminal court, that’s not the point, he’s being considered for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, his character is what’s relevant, and his appears to be significantly tainted.  Beyond Blasey’s accusations and the new ones from Ramirez, it doesn’t help Kavanaugh’s cause that he was so evasive during his confirmation hearing:  he refused to admit that he knew information provided to him back when he was in the George W Bush administration had been obtained illegally, even though the email containing the disputed information was labeled in a manner that indicated that it had been filched; he helped guide a few questionable judges through their confirmation processes, but then denied that he had any significant involvement; and, most notably, he says that he would respect that Roe v Wade is established law even though he recently wrote a scathing dissent, one that had it been the majority opinion, would have forced a 17 year old held in an INS facility to continue an unwanted pregnancy.  Moreover, he bragged about being a member of the 100 keg club during his Georgetown Prep years, was a member of a particularly misogynist club at Yale and has given several speeches all ending with a variation of the Vegas coda: what happened at Georgetown, Yale, or where ever, stays there. After a weekend of back and forth negotiations that took place before the Ramirez accusation went public, Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley finally agreed to defer a committee vote and to hold a session on Thursday to hear and question Dr. Blasey and Judge Kavanaugh about her allegations.  As of now Grassley is not allowing the subpoenaing of Mark Judge, the Kavanaugh friend that Dr. Blasey asserts witnessed and participated in the attack, or any other witnesses. Last night, in response to the Ramirez accusation, Senator Diane Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, renewed her calls for an FBI investigation and called for the cancellation of the Thursday hearing pending an FBI report.  To the extent that the Thursday hearing takes place her Democratic colleagues plan to conduct their own questioning of Kavanaugh and Blasey. However, the all-male Republican contingent on the Judiciary Committee are so afraid that they will mishandle their Blasey interrogation that they are still considering engaging a female surrogate, either a staff member or an outside lawyer, as a stand in. And it’s not just that they would come off sounding mean, they’ve already demonstrated that they are meanspirited.  In addition to trying to accelerate the Kavanaugh vote to get ahead of the newest accuser, they’ve also been engaging in some nefarious shenanigans.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell told the audience at the pious Values Voter Conference (values voters!?!) that he plans to plow Kavanaugh’s confirmation through and that he’s confident that he has the votes to do so and Lindsey Graham said that regardless of what Dr. Blasey says he’s planning to vote for Kavanaugh because why should a few accusations ruin that good guy’s career.   One Republican aide appears to have been working with the outside conservative group that spread the false story that Blasey had been attacked by a Kavanaugh doppelganger, a story that he may have coordinated with Kavanaugh, and another Republican staff member was pulled off the Kavanaugh squad after his own history as an accused abuser came to light.  Furthering the observation that the current crop of Republicans are particularly heinous, over the weekend it was revealed that Jason Miller who served as Trump’s key spokesman during the 2016 campaign but lost out on the job of White House communications director after it was revealed that the he tried to force one of his girlfriends to get an abortion, slipped an abortion causing drug into a smoothie that he delivered to another girlfriend, causing her to miscarry and requiring her to spend a few days scarily ill in the hospital. The married Miller has now lost his job as one of CNN’s Republican pundits, a job he never should have had in the first place.  At this point there has been no word from Senators Murkowski, Flake or Corker but Senator Collins has expressed some of her characteristic dismay at Trump’s suggestion that were her accusations true Blasey would have reported them when they happened.  Hopefully, McConnell was bluffing when he said that they are all on board to vote yes for confirmation.  As to Kavanaugh, if he has any sense at all, he’ll withdraw his nomination sooner rather than later, moving aside for another uber conservative judge, one with fewer warts but similar views.          

Numbered Days:  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein still has his job but his days are most certainly numbered.  On Friday afternoon, the NY Times reported that during the days following Trump’s dismissal of FBI Director James Comey, a dismissal that Trump initially attributed to a Rosenstein recommendation, a very frazzled Rosenstein seriously  considered wearing a wire during his conversations with Trump and contemplated trying to get a few members of the cabinet to help him initiate Article 25 proceedings to get Trump out of office and into a loony bin.  The NY Times article which was based on information provided by current and former members of the Justice Department and FBI also cites a contemporaneous memo written by former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe but doesn’t quote any people who were actually present at the time that Rosenstein is believed to have made those remarks.  Rosenstein’s allies say that he has a particularly dry sense of humor, that anything he said was most certainly said sarcastically and was not meant to be taken seriously and that some of the NY Times’ sources, particularly former FBI employees Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe, are no fans of Rosenstein and could be out to get him.  To that end, the NY Times is facing a lot of criticism for even publishing the story, with many saying that in an effort to get a sensational story out, the paper may have accelerated the end of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.  Shortly after the article appeared, the Washington Post weighed in with an article based on conversations with people who were actually in attendance at the time that Rosenstein said what he is alleged to have said and they report that he was most definitely just engaging in gallows humor.  For his part Rosenstein denies that he ever seriously considered taping Trump and, under pressure from Chief of Staff Kelly, one of the people Rosenstein supposedly was planning to enlist to get the 25th Amendment process rolling, Rosenstein followed up with a more forceful statement that more or less said that Trump wasn’t nuts enough to warrant a 25^th Amendment removal. Rosenstein is now treading water in a sinkhole.  He might make it through the midterms but only because Trump is being advised to contain himself for now so as not to do anything that would contribute to the “blue wave.” And to steal a term from Comey, oh lordy wouldn’t it be nice if that blue wave turns into a tsunami and is more than just a Democratic fantasy.  Interestingly enough one of the people telling Trump to control his hatchett is his favorite advisor Sean Hannity who thinks that the NY Times article was planted to get Trump to do something damaging to his own interests.   In any case, even prior to the NY Times article, expectations were high that Trump’s post election plans include firing both Rosenstein and Attorney General Sessions.  Whatever Mueller is up to, he’d better act fast, and, to the extent that he hasn’t already, he’d better get those thumb drives chock full of reports and impending indictments out to reliable Federal Attorneys across the country. As to Rosenstein, sarcastic or not, who can blame him for wanting to wear a wire, or even turning on his cell phone Omarosa style, and it goes without saying that Trump is crazy, but sadly crazy like a fox. Few if any of his remaining cabinet members would ever consider invoking the 25^th Amendment.