I watched the hearings this morning. As the hearings began, Ford looked nervous, vulnerable, and scared and began speaking with a quavering voice. She got a little better with time but throughout she looked credible and, for want of a better word, natural. She was almost in tears when Blumenthal praised her courage in coming forward despite the trauma. I cringed to hear, when asked about what was her most indelible memory of the event, how Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughed during the assault, that they were having fun assaulting her. She said that she had met Kavanaugh many times before the assault so there was no question of her confusing him with someone else. Although I believed her even before the hearings, I can only say that she showed the entire nation what an honest person she is.
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… the media were abuzz over the story that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who overseas the Mueller investigation, had gone to the White House today to either offer his resignation or be fired in the wake of reports that he had doubted the president’s competence and even suggested that people wear a wire when talking to him, though that has been characterized as facetious. That report turns out to be premature and any decision has been postponed until at least Thursday. The whole non-event may have been orchestrated to create a distraction from the Kavanaugh debacle.

Marty Lederman, a professor of law at Georgetown University, lays out the complex series of succession options that would come into play if Rosenstein were be fired or resign because of the recusal of attorney general Jeff Sessions and other key players. It is a mess.

In this White House, the only thing that is straightforward is the transfer of money to the already wealthy from the rest of us.

The Republican strategy with the Brett Kavanuagh nomination is clear: Quickly have hearings that feature only Kavanuagh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford, declare that it is a ‘he said, she said’ stalemate, decide that Kavanaugh’s denials are credible, and vote him in. But as a quintet of former prosecutors have pointed out, there are many ways to get further than just two conflicting testimonies, but this requires investigation by an independent party to ferret out corroborating or contradictory evidence, and having hearings without such preliminary work would result in just a charade.
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Some defenders of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the US Supreme Court have responded to the allegations that have been leveled against him by arguing, like senator Orrin Hatch does, that this was youthful behavior and that what matters is what kind of person he is now,. But it is important to realize that what is alleged is not drunken high jinks, some casual groping done at a party. What happened was attempted rape that involved isolating, overpowering, and silencing the victim. When Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge are said to have done is take a 15-year old girl Christine Blasey Ford to a closed room and then try to rip off her clothes in order to rape her. It was only her taking a brief opportunity of confusion to lock herself in a bathroom that prevented the rape from taking place. Kavanaugh was 17 years old at the time and in the US many 17-year olds are tried as adults if the crime is serious enough, though whether that is a good thing is a debate for another place and time.
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Older people may remember how Anita Hill was vilified and her name dragged through the mud when she came forward with allegations of odious behavior by then US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. He was finally confirmed after he cowed craven Democrats, including then judiciary chair Joe Biden, by alleging racism when it was nothing of the sort. And that was before the days of the internet. Now new allegations have emerged about even worse behavior, this time an attempted rape of a 15-year old, by current nominee Brett Kavanaugh. (The full interview can be read here but may have a paywall restriction.)
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The influence of money in politics lies largely in the fact that if you are a big donor to politicians, you can get immediate access to them. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is perhaps the best example of this process in action. It turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently considering bringing criminal charges against the Trump organization in the wake of the information released in the recent convictions and plea deals of close associates of Donald Trump.
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The protestors who were acquitted of all charges for actions during Donald Trump’s inauguration are now pressing for action against the prosecutors. According to Sam Adler-Bell, they are turning the tables on the people who brought charges against them, accusing them of prosecutorial misconduct for the extraordinary lengths they went to expand the number and seriousness of charges, to the extent of including people who just happened to be there as being complicit in the actions, and also for withholding evidence that was in the defendants’ favor.
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I have written before about the punitive prosecutions launched in Washington, DC against 234 people who were arrested during the anti-Trump demonstrations at his inauguration last year and charged with ‘felony rioting’. After a trial, a jury cleared six protestors of all charges. Then prosecutors were forced to drop charges against six others after the judge found that they had behaved unethically.
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