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Until two weeks ago, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court seemed a sure thing. He ably handled more than 1,200 questions put to him by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He demonstrated even to his adversaries a masterful command of constitutional jurisprudence. The FBI had completed six background investigations of Kavanaugh throughout his career in government, and it found no blemishes.
Trump promised that he would appoint federal judges and justices who generally share his views on life, guns and administrative regulations and who have a minimalistic view of federal power. When he announced the Kavanaugh nomination, it appeared he had found his man.
The nomination requires Senate confirmation by a majority vote. The Senate currently has 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats. A few Republican senators do not share the president’s stated views on the judiciary, and a few Democrats do. The inside consensus was that enough Democratic senators running for re-election in states that Trump carried in 2016 would vote to confirm Kavanaugh and those Democrats would handily offset the few Republicans who might oppose him.
During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh dutifully followed the pattern of all current sitting justices at their confirmation hearings by declining to answer hypothetical questions which sought answers as to how he might vote on certain issues likely to come before the court. He survived the grueling cross-examination by Committee Democrats and even won begrudging praise from a few.
Then, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, dropped a bombshell.
She revealed that a constituent who wished to remain anonymous had written a letter to a member of the House of Representatives, who had turned the letter over to Feinstein. The letter contained allegations by the writer, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, that Kavanaugh had drunkenly attempted sexual assault against her 36 years ago. Feinstein had the letter for two months before she revealed its existence — a week after the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings had ended.
This is reminiscent of allegations leveled by Professor Anita Hill against then-Judge Clarence Thomas, though those allegations were of inappropriate words in the workplace and the Ford allegations are of force and violence in a bedroom. When Hill’s allegations were published, President George H.W. Bush dispatched the FBI to resume its background investigation of Thomas, and it did so.
Trump has declined to dispatch the FBI to investigate Ford’s allegations, and other allegations that have now followed hers, because he and Senate Republicans are determined to seat Kavanaugh by next week.
In the absence of an FBI investigation, Ford gave an interview to The Washington Post in which she aired her complaints in graphic detail, despite missing facts and fuzzy recollections. Democrats demanded that the Judiciary Committee hear from her and again from Kavanaugh. They appear to be assuming that Kavanaugh should not enjoy the American presumption of innocence and — without hearing a word from Ford or seeing any corroborating evidence – have concluded that Kavanaugh must be guilty of this alleged offense and thus cannot be confirmed.
Then the folks in the White House who are managing the Kavanaugh nomination advised him to violate Criminal Procedure 101: Don’t deny publicly an allegation before it has credibly and publicly been made. So, Kavanaugh was interviewed by my Fox News colleague Martha MacCallum. Her questions were far better than his answers.
His answers to the allegations contained in a newspaper story were three-fold — he didn’t do it, he wants a fair process and — unthinkably — he was a virgin during his high school and college years. I say “unthinkably” not because virginity is beyond belief but because this claim was not in response to any of MacCallum’s questions and it bore so deeply into Kavanaugh’s personhood as to be none of the public’s business. And it is not a defense to the Ford allegations.
What’s going on here?
What’s going on is crisis and panic. The pro-choice Democrats are in crisis: They are so fearful of a decisive vote to limit the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence that they are willing to destroy a qualified judge’s career to block his advancement. And Kavanaugh’s handlers, who, at this writing, probably lack the votes for confirmation, have recklessly put him on the offensive, even if it is debasing and invasive.
Now we await a potentially tragic confrontation on national television between Ford and Kavanaugh, which will come down to perception rather than reality. The issue is not whether he did it. Rather, it is whether his denials are more believable than her allegations. At the end of their Judiciary Committee confrontation, will the general public perception be that Ford was more credible or that Kavanaugh was more credible?
There are no rules here. Ford has no legal obligation to prove her allegations, and Kavanaugh has no legal obligation to disprove them.
A tie — the public perception that Ford and Kavanaugh are equally credible — will be very troublesome for Kavanaugh. No woman would go through what Ford is going through if she lacked a personal commitment to the truth. So Kavanaugh can only win if Dr. Christine Ford is generally disbelieved.
The Kavanaugh nomination was supposed to be Trump’s gift to his pro-life, conservative, evangelical base. It has become anything but that. If Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, will he ever lose the taint of these allegations? If he is not confirmed, can he return to the second-highest court in the land, on which he now sits? Is this how the framers expected the selection process for the Supreme Court to play out? In a word: No.
Copyright 2018 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.
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THE DEMOGRATS ARE GETTING DESPERATE; 96% OF WOMEN ARE LIARS.
When a conservative is going to get appointed to the Supreme Court, the liberals have gone nuts.
Trump derangement syndrome has reached extreme levels, with these women making up bogus stories. These bizarre stories show their desperation. Why no police report in 30+ years?
Liberals are liars. Lying that race is a social construct, etc.
Women are liars. See:
https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/96-of-women-are-liars-honest-1-565123
No woman would go through what Ford is going through if she lacked a personal commitment to the truth.
Opinion stated as fact.
Of course not. No man has ever been wrongly accused by a woman before – whether to the police, a divorce court, or her kids. Nor has a woman ever lied about anything else before. You know, girls, spice and everything nice, but boys, oh my, snails and tails.
Not even sure this article has a point, the deadline was close and Nappy had to write something. Even if it was amazingly pointless and, at the end of the day, wrong. He even hit the nail on the head: the point of the “resistance” is to commit crimes, lie, cheat, whatever, for the sake of their Bolshevik agenda.
There is no fucking commitment to truth, nimrod Nappy, FFS!
I’ve said elsewhere on this site that these confirmation controversies are part of the puppet show. But commenting on Mr. Napolitano’s anti-Trump propaganda is irresistible.
This column is stage setting the White House’s responsibility for a vote not to confirm by asserting that the FBI should have been sent in to investigate the allegation of Ms. Ford (and every new daily accuser, “Judge”?). Note how this is contradistinguished from the previous controversy during the confirmation of Justice Thomas, when a reliably Establishment Republican was in the White House:
“When Hill’s allegations were published, President George H.W. Bush dispatched the FBI to resume its background investigation of Thomas, and it did so.”
In his typically misleading fashion, Mr. Napolitano obscures the timing relative to the hearing process and other circumstances of this “resumption.” (His columns often read like the briefs he must have seen from sleazy lawyers.) And, once a nomination has been submitted and hearings completed, isn’t it now up to the Senate how to deal with subsequent information?
One would expect a columnist who espouses traditional, Constitutional principles to urge confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh. But Mr. Napolitano’s higher calling is to put President Trump in a bad light, and to give cover to Republican members of the Senate who want to do likewise.
Are you serious judge? “No woman would go through what Ford is going through if she lacked a personal commitment to the truth”. Where did you get this nonsense from? Ford is a SJW. As a SJW she will say anything to further the ends of SJWs. What is it you fail to understand? What will Ford go through? Will she be sent to the gulag for lying?
Are you Ford’s “oath helper” judge? Do you know what oath helpers were? Do we see them in US courts today?
“No woman would go through what Ford is going through if she lacked a personal commitment to the truth. So Kavanaugh can only win if Dr. Christine Ford is generally disbelieved.”
It’s not so much that she is “generally disbelieved” as that she suffers from what Freud called “hysteria”. Her over-the-top emotional response to what was really just inept, adolescent fumbling makes her look like she’s unhinged. And to claim that she suffered “PTSD” and “learning disabilities” because of such a trivial event that happened 36 years ago makes her look weak. No one likes a loser. Her strategy of weepy, self pity may backfire.
Watching the judge on Fox News during “halftime” during Dr. Ford’s testimony.
Useless fool. She’s not credible. That guy would make an easy mark for any con-artist.
Ford: I can’t remember if I took my polygraph test (one month ago) on the day of my grandmother’s funeral or the next day. Really?
Ford: There was loud music in the room but I heard people talking downstairs.
Ford: I don’t remember if I gave a copy of my medical records to the reporter – last month.
Etc. etc. Basically I don’t see how she’s credible at all – unless you believe Tom Hanks is credible and spent many years stranded on a deserted island.
” No woman wold go through what Ford is going through”
Damn I have encountered myriads of bullshit on the net but this takes the absolute cake as the most absurd assertion ever.
Just what is she “going through”, when fact is she in now being elevated to the pantheon of foremost SJWs nationwide, and she will be viewed as a “hero” of women’s causes for the rest of her days, aside from all of the other “benefits” which will be showered upon her, and the most ironic aspect of this farce being that she is an advocate of the phoney “pseudo-science” of psychology, which only confirms the notion of her as an abject nut-case.
My sister went through three years of psych at Michigan state, and dropped abruptly out, after waking up one morning after seeing the light regarding the crock of shiot psychology and it’s partner in crime psychiatry.
AN’s idiotic anti-DT commentary turns my stomach to the point that I don’t even care to opine thereon.
AJM
I was very confused by this article until I read the comments posted here. Now I realize that I did actually read what Napolitano said.
In my 68 years and the kind of work I did, it became almost second nature when talking to someone for 5-10 minutes to know whether someone was telling the truth. Napolitano is a bright man so for him to say “No woman would go through…” indicates that he has an agenda here which is against Kavanaugh or Trump or both.
How could anyone with many years of living say that a woman like this must be telling the truth. It is a regular, very common thing for women who are going to Family Court and Divorce Court to lie and tell more lies, and it is a regular thing for women to lie when it means they can get public acclaim, money, and above all degrade and destroy a man for his integrity and what he believes in if it goes against her feelings and especially in 2018 her political beliefs where for Democrats, abortion seems to be the most important item on their agenda. Kavanaugh goes against near everything these Democrat ultraliberal leftists want for this world.
It is heart lifting when I hear people speak straight and tell the truth, but what I have encountered when it comes to child custody , divorce, and accusations of abuse , more than half of women will do whatever it takes to get their way. Lying is a normal thing for most women (they don’t see it as lying because THEIR beliefs are all that matter).
I spent many years around soldiers and Marines and it was a regular occurrence to see women invent stories in order to make their husbands look bad in order to obtain custody, property, and money, and also immense satisfaction to hate and ruin a man.
Younger women are worse but older women like this Ford are not far behind. It would be easy to dissect Ford’s life and then observe how she answers and then arrive at what kind of person she is.
My opinion of Napolitano has changed in a very big way. I will reserve trusting the man anymore.
“No woman would go through what Ford is going through if she lacked a personal commitment to the truth.” (You share those sentiments with CNN, by the way.)
Why, if not for “commitment to the truth”, would Dr. C. B. Ford of Stanford University make such an allegation?
First off, charlatans and cons have been known to accept pay offs from political machines, but aside from that:
book deals;
talk shows;
paid speaking engagements;
appointments — or grants — to better paid positions;
posing as a victim angel before admiring nitwits ( big payoff for a homely narcissist).
Hell, she may even run for political office under the tutelage of Sen. Harris or Maxine Waters, that wacko woman from Hawaii, Feinstein, any of the dog pack. There could be any number of benefits for a woman who could author that spurious, moronic letter and then sob the story of her pained hipocampus on television.
America is permanently diminished by this charade.
I was going to vacation there. Now I don’t think I’ll bother – ever again.
In the matter of confirmation for Supreme Court Judge, Mr. Kavanaugh is accused of having inappropriately touched a 15 year old girl when he, himself, was 17.
Objection, Your Honor: Relevance
Welcome to the club! You’ve made my day.
Read what he’s written about RussiaGate, etc., since last November in the light of my and others’ critical comments and you’ll see the slippery, artful language propagandizing for the Establishment. Another thing that will come through if you review his last year’s work is his sycophancy for the priestly (legal) class of Washington.
Mr. Napolitano is not to be trusted.
Well I listened to most of Ford’s “testimony”, being on the road for a long time yesterday. It was obvious that she had been coached, told what to say and how to say it. I note that she took a week to prepare herself ; that week she spent not with a therapist or a health professional but with her lawyer – a notorious promoter of the feminist agenda. I did not find any evidence whatever in her answers and I still believe, as I did before, that this allegation is spurious. The fawning of democrat senators on this latest heroine of the “resistance” was cringeworthy. Later when questioning Judge Kavanaugh, or merely grandstanding, these same senators were downright insulting. They also ignored what he said. How many times is it necessary to ask someone if he or she ever drank so much that he, or she or zhir or zhey or…., blacked out. Some senators asked that multiple times IIRC.
I have long looked in unbelief as the american political circus unfolded. It has now come to the point where politics has intersected with SJW culture. America you are doomed. I’d go back to my native Canada but it’s already even worse there. Look at Justin Trudeau and you will see your own future.
As for Judge Napolitano he’s right; Kavanaugh is eminently qualified and should be confirmed. The allegations coming out of nowhere from completely uncredible persons and their sleazy attorneys will only continue until the democrats get the delay they want. Am I the only one who gets a whiff of George Soros here? Somebody is paying these women, expenses if nothing else.
“As for Judge Napolitano he’s right; Kavanaugh is eminently qualified and should be confirmed.”
But Mr. Napolitano has said here no such thing.
Please read the other comments, and then go back over the column. You will see that it is intended to enable a negative vote on confirmation, to be blamed on President Trump.
[Sorry to post this again, but I apparently used the wrong REPLY botton the first time. It seems worse to not address sailor1031 directly.]
I don’t think it’s possible to be human and have a less blemished background that Kavanaugh. Thus has been a disgrace from start to finish. Is there a human being alive who did not do something stupid when s/he was seventeen?
And Blasey Ford’s cross-examination was pathetic. They were too scared to victim-shame.
The American female has come out of this looking like a whiny, cowardly, entitled creep.
Accusations without evidence should count for nothing.
I keep saying this: we live in a matriarchy. People love to turn things on their head and claim we live in a patriarchy – because guys are out there doing all the work, creating all the technology, building the roads, etc. That makes them the worker caste.
It’s sort of like a beehive, except male and female roles are reversed. The males do the vast majority of the work, and the women reap the vast majority of the benefits.
Look just at the issue of reproductive rights. What rights do men have? I’ll tell you: exactly ZERO. Whether you are married or not, a woman can butcher your baby – without even telling you. You may be perfectly willing – no, thrilled! – to raise your baby, but as a man, you have no rights whatsoever. And if you absolutely don’t want a baby, she can keep it, without asking you, and you get to pay for it for its whole life. Child support, alimony, paying for dates, taxes/welfare (how many women are on welfare living off strange men), the list just goes on and on and on and on.
As pointed out there, the number of false sex/domestic abuse allegations made against men by women, to get there way, is just staggering. It’s happened to me and virtually every man I have known. While it is also true that many many men have, in fact, sexually assaulted a woman, it is equally true that many many women have, in fact, falsely accused a man. And there is nothing whatsoever inconsistent about these two observations. It is two different strategies for two types of people – men (who are strong, are biologically programmed to pursue sex and work hard to make money) and women (who are weak, are biologically programmed to reproduce but not to pursue sex (yes it’s different) and like to take money from men).
I agree.
What happened to burden of proof? All this is supposed to have occurred before any of them were age of majority.
“The American female has come out of this looking like a whiny, cowardly, entitled creep.”
Yep, or else a mindless, ruthless bitch, e.g. (“Yes or no, judge, just yes or no”) Kamala Harris.
I had to reread this a couple of times to make sure I understood it correctly. What a stupid thing to say.
If anyone cares to donate to the selfless victimized saint who has such a personal commitment to the truth that she is willing to go through what she is going through: https://www.gofundme.com/help-christine-blasey-ford
Sorry I should have been clearer. I quote from Judge Napolitano:
“He ably handled more than 1,200 questions put to him by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He demonstrated even to his adversaries a masterful command of constitutional jurisprudence. The FBI had completed six background investigations of Kavanaugh throughout his career in government, and it found no blemishes.”
I should have made clear that “should be confirmed” was my statement not the Judge’s.
How many of those 1,200+ questions delved into his views on Presidential war making or warrantless surveillance? Are you aware of Judge Kavanaugh’s history on these issues?
One reason for these tawdry confirmation hearings is to lead people to embrace either the Red or Blue team of our rulers. If any of these people cared more for your liberty than for their career, they wouldn’t even be in the running.
Just like voting for Trump, we have to make the best of what we have.
Today he is a man in his mid 50’s. What connection is there to what he was, did or thought as a teenager?
I agree. And why did she wait 36 years before coming forward?
He is still white. He is still male. Isn’t that enough?
Thanks anonymous and thanks to those commenting. I clicked on and saw that Ford has 528,000 for her fund drive and it keeps rising.
I tell everyone-always follow the money.
Thanks. I will check a bit more on Napolitano. Maybe he is looking for big bucks.
No, you don’t.
The sooner people quit endorsing this farce, the sooner falls the curtain. Save your energy for the rebuilding of our country.
Judge Napolitano, I have always admired your ability to understand and articulate the wording/meaning of the Constitution and how it gets violated from time to time. I have a question for you…did you recently give a lecture (lesson on a white board) in front of a room full of people about Kavanaugh being one of the people who helped write the Patriot Act and who decided on a case that violated the 4th Amendment? I am curious, because I have seen a snippet from that video that has been circulating lately, but you made no mention of any of that information in this article and of course, I know videos can be edited and faked. I would really like to know if that is true and where you stand on Kavanaugh’s adherence (or non-adherence) to the Constitution in his history as a judge. I would have no problem with the Senate voting for or against him on those merits, but the circus they created has nothing to do with that. Please let us know what you think. Thanks!