With Questions Unanswered, Reopen Kavanaugh Hearing

         Update: Pressure to postpone a vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh increased on Sunday (Sept. 16) after a California psychology professor, Christine Blasey Ford, identified herself as Kavanaugh's accuser and publicly detailed the alleged assault along with corroborating evidence of notes from therapy sessions in 2012. Two Republican senators, Judiciary Committee member Jeff Flake of Arizona and Tennessee's Bob Corker, both called for postponing the scheduled Sept. 20 vote to hear from Ford, but the White House said President Trump was stil committed to Kavanaugh's nomination and the announced schedule.

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   The Senate Judiciary Committee owes it to the American public and to Judge Brett Kavanaugh himself to reopen its hearing on his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The committee's dereliction of duty has been an essential element from the start of the narrow Republican majority's plan to railroad Kavanaugh's nomination through to confirmation before the Court opens its new term in October even without a full examination of his White House records.
      As an initial point, the Republicans' rush to get Kavanaugh confirmed before First Monday in October contradicts their decision two years ago to leave the Supreme Court short-handed for more than a year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Chuck Grassley, left the Court with one seat vacant in 2016 rather than open a hearing on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland in spring 2016.
      The consequences of the Judiciary Committee's planned rush to judgment -- the many unansweed questions about his White House service -- were clear even before the bombshell accusation that Kavanaugh allegedly committed a sexual assault on a fellow high school student more than 30 years ago. The accusation by an as-yet unidentified contemporary of Kavanaugh's now living in California stems from constituent correspondence with her representative in Congress that the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, held for two months before finally deciding to forward it to the FBI for possible investigation.
      The events naturally brought to mind the belated accusation of sexual harassment against the then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. A lot has changed since law professor Anita Hill made that accusation against her former boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Even with the #MeTooMovement as a backdrop, however, Kavanaugh's anonymous accuser apparently is trying to avoid the inevitable nationwide media firestorm of a public accusation.
      Initially, Feinstein disclosed only that she had forwarded an allegation of some sort to the FBI, but the accusation was unearthed with some measure of detail within 24 hours by the sexual harassment reporting team at the New Yorker: Ronan Farrow, a Pulitzer prize winner for his stories on the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, and Jane Mayer, a veteran of the Thomas confirmation hearing. In sum, the woman claims that Kavanaugh and another boy forced her into a bedroom at party and that Kavanaugh forced himself on her with the door locked and music playing to drown out her protests. Kavanaugh responded by "categorically and unequivocally" denying the accusation.
      Whatever one makes of the accusation, the committee owes it to the public and to the constitutional separation of powers to reopen the hearing to fully examine the parts of  Kavanaugh's testimony that were at the least disingenuous if not outright perjurious. Kavanaugh was unbelievable on the stand as he sought to explain away the apparent contradictions between his White House-era emails and his testimony in 2004 as a nominee for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
      Back then, Kavanaugh sought to minimize his role as a partisan operative in the White House by, for example, denying any involvement with one of President George W. Bush's most controversial judicial appointments: the nomination of Alabama's William Pryor Jr. to the Eleventh Circuit. Kavanaugh told the Judiciary Committee in 2004 that he was "not primarily involved" in Pryor's nomination while White House staff secretary, but an email from the partial release of his White House records confirm at least some involvement with the eventually successful push for Pryor's confirmation despite his intemperate remarks about the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision.
      In his current testimony, Kavanaugh was unconvincing in trying to rebut the accusation from Vermont Democrat Patrick J. Leahy that he was complicit in the then-notorious theft of a Democratic memo on judicial nominations in 2004. Kavanaugh's email record showed that he received a copy of the Democrats' memo from the Republican committee staffer Manuel Miranda in an email with the subject line: "Spying."
      Kavanaugh sought to prove his innocence by contending to Leahy that he thought Republican staffers had obtained the information legitimately through the ordinary process of Capitol Hill intelligence-sharing. Leahy, an eight-term senator with a somewhat bipartisan record on judicial nominations, was not buying Kavanaugh's explanation. "I may have been born at night," Leahy quipped at the hearing [Sept. 6], "but not last night." With time to reflect, Leahy responded with an op-ed in the Washington Post [Sept. 14] stating that he would vote against Kavanaugh's confirmation. Kavanaugh, he said, had "cast aside truth in pursuit of raw ambition."
      The Judiciary Committee convened on Thursday [Sept. 13] after Kavanaugh had filed some 263 pages of answers to the 1,000 additional questions that Democrats had posed following the supposed end of the four-day hearing the week earlier. Democrats made a series of motions to reopen the hearing and to subpoena various witnesses, including Miranda, but the Republicans voted the motions down in partisan lock-step.
      None of the committee's Republicans — all of them male — evinced not a scintilla of doubt about Kavanaugh's truthfulness, his integrity, or his bona fides as a self-professed "independent federal judge." With the hearing completed, all eyes remained focused on the two uncommitted Republican senators, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and Maine's Susan Collins, both of them pro-choice women unswayed so far by warnings that Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.