1/ Brett Kavanaugh's high school yearbook page lists him as the treasurer of the "100 Kegs or Bust' club" and a "Renate Alumnius" – a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls' school. "Renate" appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School's 1983 yearbook, including on individuals' pages and in a group photo of nine football players. Two of Kavanaugh's classmates say the Renate mentions were football players' boasting about their supposed sexual conquests with girls. (New York Times / CNN / Washington Post)
He’s accused of attempted rape and sexual assault. All this proves is that he didn’t lose his virginity by attempting to rape or assault someone. He’s so fucking creepy, he should have lost his nomination by now.
As far as I and others are concerned, this hearing is going to be an attempt to bully and railroad the victim, Dr. Ford, with the hiring of a sex crimes prosecutor. As we have heard as well, no R Judicial Committee members plan on asking questions of Dr. Ford. Dr. Ford is not allowed to speak after Kavanaugh, giving him the opportunity to finalize his case and refute all her charges. No FBI investigation is being done on the allegations etc.
Lots of commentary from pundits about what Kavanaugh has claimed so far on Fox News last night and in his previous hearings are misleading statements (and/or lies) as to his participation in
gathering and utilizing the democratic judicial nomination files
his having had any contact, sexual or otherwise with these 2 known women so far (Ford and Ramirez)
attending parties with a ton of drinking and drunkenness
gambling and/or overspending habits which he dismissed.
claiming he was a virgin…(rumored to be false *)
Be that as it may, the push to get the confirmation hearings going again…and getting some testimony from Dr. Ford over with so that the R’s can Kavanaugh in a SCOTUS seat is tantamount.
Kavanaugh’s hearing is set for Thursday. Here’s what we know so far.
As Brett Kavanaugh’s historic hearing approaches, both sides are still clashing on the details of it.
Although the sticking points don’t seem to be a road block that will force a delay of the hearing, there is fierce negotiating going on between lawyers for the accusers and the Republican staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here’s where things stand:
Republicans have hired a prosecutor: Monday night, a lawyer for the committee confirmed in an email to lawyers for Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, that Chairman Chuck Grassley has hired an “experienced sex-crimes prosecutor” to serve as an investigative staff counsel for the hearing, according to a source on the committee.
But that’s not what Ford wants: All along, lawyers for Ford have objected to the Republicans’ plan of using an outside counsel to question their client. Ford’s camp has argued that this is not a criminal trial that would warrant the involvement of an experienced sex crimes prosecutor.
We’re not sure who the prosecutor is: As of last night, two of her attorneys contacted the committee asking for details about who the outside counsel might be. According to a committee source, lawyer Debra Katz was told that the name would not be released for “safety reasons” to protect the new lawyer from attacks similar to those that have been launched against Ford and Kavanaugh.
What comes next: Later today sexual assault experts are expected to weigh in, in call with media, against the use of a prosecutor which could transform the hearings into a “trial-like environment.”
What about the second accuser? Committee lawyers have reached out to lawyers for Deborah Ramirez — who detailed separate allegations to the New Yorker — and asked whether she has any evidence. Ramirez’s attorney John Clune tweeted “Our client stands by the facts of the New Yorker story as reported.”
This just in…
Steve Kantrowitz @skantrow
Perhaps Brett Kavanaugh was a virgin for many years after high school. But he claimed otherwise in a conversation with me during our freshman year in Lawrance Hall at Yale, in the living room of my suite.
7:37 AM - Sep 25, 2018
Christopher Steele’s name and the mention of the Steele Dossier has become such a lightning rod for the R’s that it looks like Mueller’s team is giving it very little weight in their evidentiary pursuits. The R’s pounce on the word “Steele” and “Dossier” - so this seems good to not feature it.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team found itself in an odd spot recently — having to discuss Christopher Steele, the former British spy and author of a fiercely disputed anti-Trump dossier.
Prosecutors were pushed to weigh in on the loaded subject after lawyers for Concord Management — the Russian company Mueller has accused of helping orchestrate the massive online campaign to sow chaos in America’s democratic process — argued in August that Mueller had targeted the firm “selectively” while giving Steele, and others Concord accuses of foreign interference efforts, a pass.
In a document filed Friday night, Mueller’s team responded, arguing that Steele’s actions don’t “remotely compare” to the “systematic, deceptive effort” by the allegedly Concord-backed Russian social media trolls attempting to interfere in the 2016 election.
It’s a rare allusion to Steele by Mueller’s team. The former spy has become the subject of fierce attacks by Trump and his allies for the claims in his dossier, which Trump has rejected as fabricated. The dossier alleges a years-long connection between Trump and Russia, leading to a conspiracy to help Trump win the 2016 election. The Justice Department relied — in part — on Steele’s dossier to help obtain a surveillance warrant in late 2016 on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
And the cynical side of me makes this ring true. Unfortunately.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that a bipartisan election security bill won’t be passed by Congress ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Lankford told The Hill that the text of the bill, known as the Secure Elections Act, is still being worked out. And with the House only being in session for a limited number of days before the elections, the chances of an election security bill being passed by then are next to none.
“The House won’t be here after this week so it’s going to be impossible to get passed,” Lankford said of the bill.
The legislation, which aims to protect elections from cyber attacks, was initially set to be addressed by a Senate committee last month.
But the mark-up was abruptly postponed by Senate Rules and Administration Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) over a lack of Republican support and after some secretaries of state shared concerns about the bill
Three of Kavanaugh’s classmates pull their support and request an investigation.
Three former Yale Law School classmates who endorsed Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh called Tuesday for an investigation into allegations by two women that he engaged in sexual misconduct in the 1980s.
Kent Sinclair, Douglas Rutzen and Mark Osler were among roughly two dozen of Kavanaugh’s law school classmates who lauded Kavanaugh’s qualifications in an Aug. 27 letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Their support for an investigation came as Yale Law professor Akhil Amar — who taught Kavanaugh and testified on his behalf before the committee this month — also called for a probe into what he described as “serious accusations” from the women.
—
However, in a joint statement to The Washington Post on Tuesday, Sinclair and Rutzen said that new allegations require “a fair and credible investigation.”
“The confirmation process should be conducted in a way that fosters trust in the process and the Supreme Court, and that seriously considers allegations of sexual violence,” stated Sinclair, a political independent who practices law in Beverly, Mass., and Rutzen, a lawyer in Washington and registered Democrat.
Well funded Judicial Crisis Network blasts conservative, pro-Kavanaugh messages
Get every R Judicial committee member to hear the accuser but publicly state they don’t believe her
Get McConnell to ram through the nominee via a hearing AND a vote on Friday.
Get Don McGahn to coach Kavanaugh daily.
Get Kavanaugh in a Fox Network interview with his wife.
Get Rachel Mitchell from AZ to act as the female voice for the R’s Judicial Committee. She is a prosecutor who specializes in Sex crimes.
Get VP Pence to work with Values Voter Summit, rallying the base.
And boast that you have to votes to pass Kavanaugh through the Senate (maybe not*)
Meanwhile, conservatives are working to ensure McConnell’s prediction comes true and that conservatives remain engaged. Vice President Pence and McConnell, among a crowd of other Republican luminaries, rallied activists over the weekend at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, and online, conservatives are blanketing their favored outlets with pro-Kavanaugh material.
White House counsel Donald McGahn, a movement veteran, has been bunkered with Kavanaugh in prep sessions for Thursday’s scheduled Senate hearing about the allegations, while a right-wing public-relations firm is operating a response operation akin to a war room in suburban Virginia.
But conservatives have also had to grapple with a botched conspiracy theory pushed by a prominent conservative lawyer that undermined their arguments. Ed Whelan took a leave of absence this week from his position as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in the wake of tweets, since deleted, suggesting that Kavanaugh’s accuser may have mistaken the jurist for someone else — and naming a former Kavanaugh classmate as a likely suspect. Days earlier, Republican senators were widely criticized for dismissively referring to Ford as a “lady” who may be “mistaken.”
The political machine on the right has kept humming throughout the fallout. Conservative groups have spent millions to boost Kavanaugh, including more than $7 million in advertising and grass-roots activity by the Judicial Crisis Network, a group that does not disclose its donors.
That organization and other entrenched movement groups like it began planning for a protracted fight months before the Supreme Court’s perennial swing justice, Anthony M. Kennedy, retired this summer.
Gary Marx, a senior adviser to the Judicial Crisis Network who manages daily conference calls with conservative allies, said the hurdles facing Kavanaugh have brought together key conservatives following months of tensions and controversies within the Republican Party.
“This is a pivot point in our nation’s politics and culture, and we’re all now back in the foxhole together,” Marx said. “This has pushed all of it back to where we were in the closing days of the 2016 campaign when even the senators and the conservatives who didn’t like Trump decided to back him because they knew he’d be able to change things like the Supreme Court.”
McConnell has been lobbying undecided GOP senators to back Kavanaugh. He met for 45 minutes on Tuesday afternoon with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a critical undecided GOP moderate. Murkowski declined to say what message she delivered to the GOP leader, refusing to answer questions about whether she will vote for or against Kavanaugh.
“We’re going to have this hearing on Thursday, and that’s the next step. I think it’s a very important step,” Murkowski said.
Other undecided Republicans — including Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Flake — also say they want to see Ford and Kavanaugh testify on Thursday before making a decision.
Actions speak louder than words, and words can be held to account, if you have someone put under oath. This rings true for Kavanaugh and most especially for Mark Judge, the alleged accomplice on the night Dr. Christine Blasey Ford will be testifying about on Thursday.
Mark Judge is in hiding.…instructed by his lawyer to get out of town. Reporter went on some hunches that he was staying w/ old friends and somewhere in Delaware. Aaron Davis, WaPo reporter spotted his car, crammed w/ Superman comics and a package addressed to Mark Drudge.
Kavanaugh is also in a form of hiding, through his denials that his HS years (and college) were not fuelled by a LOT of alcohol, and by extension, debauched behavior that he is not owning up to (I believe - and many of you do as well)
@JoyceWhiteVance
Judge has to be put under oath & asked whether, given the condition he admits to being in for much of high school, he would remember the incident Dr. Ford described if It happened. Unless he can convincingly answer yes, his denial is meaningless.
A high school friend of Kavanaugh’s, Judge has been absent from his Maryland residence for days as Democratic lawmakers and accuser Christine Blasey Ford have demanded that Republicans summon him before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions under oath.
On Monday, a Washington Post reporter found Judge holed up in the house of a longtime friend in Bethany Beach, nearly three hours away. A car in the driveway contained piles of clothing, a collection of Superman comics and a package addressed to Judge at the Potomac home where he lived three years ago.
…
> “How’d you find me?” he said.
The reporter gestured to the car packed with belongings. Judge declined to comment further.
…
Barbara “Biz” VanGelder, Judge’s lawyer, said she instructed him to leave the D.C. area last week because of an onslaught of criticism and media questions.
“I told him to leave town. He is being hounded. He is a recovering alcoholic and is under unbelievable stress,” she said. “He needed for his own health to get out of this toxic environment and take care of himself.”
VanGelder said Judge waited to leave town until after the hearing date and witnesses were announced.
and one more comment from John Heileman, of The Circus on Showtime, and Game Change author, Pundit/MSNBC
Sahil Kapur
Verified account @sahilkapur
Sep 24
.@jheil on @Lawrence says Mark Judge in 1987-88 frequented a bar where John was then a bartender: “He was an obnoxious, slovenly, disrespectful, thuggish drunk.”
422 replies 2,058 retweets 4,574 likes
Naturalized Brown Citizen
@randomsubu
Sep 24
How does a bartender remember someone from over thirty years ago?! Or was Mark Judge that awful?
15 replies 12 retweets 110 likes
John Heilemann
Verified account @jheil
Replying to @randomsubu@sahilkapur@Lawrence
He was that awful – and his older brother worked at the bar (and thought he was as terrible as the rest of us did).
7:32 PM - 24 Sep 2018
This is the most explosive BOOM, aside from T’s indictment, resignation, or something along those lines.
Here’s the word from Kavanaugh via WH pool, and CNN’s Jim Acosta.
Schumer is calling for Kavanaugh’s name to be withdrawn
T is saying Avenatti is a third rate lawyer
@realDonaldTrump
Avenatti is a third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations, like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He is just looking for attention and doesn’t want people to look at his past record and relationships - a total low-life!
9:47 AM - 26 Sep 2018
