Today, the cruelest episode in the ongoing Trump reality show will air, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to grill Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than three decades ago. Both witnesses are likely to come out battered and scarred.
Ford was the first of three alleged sexual assault survivors who argue that Kavanaugh should not be voted onto the elite island that is the nation’s highest court. Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale with the nominee, accuses him of having exposed himself to her and yesterday, Julie Swetnick, who attended parties that included Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge, submitted an affidavit to the judiciary committee that claims that both men conspired to incapacitate young women for purposes of gang rape.
The charges are ugly. The stakes among the highest for all involved. Lying to the Senate, something Kavanaugh stands accused of having done during past appearances, is a crime. The big loser in the potentially lurid drama, should Kavanaugh be confirmed, will be the Supreme Court, a once-revered institution that has never recovered the legitimacy it has sacrificed with its nakedly partisan rulings. Chief among those was Bush v. Gore, the power play by the court’s conservative majority that helped make George W. Bush president. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would cement a court with a conservative majority that includes two members credibly accused of sexual assault.
The other loser is the U.S. Senate, which, at this juncture, has little to lose by way of respect. Kavanaugh’s confirmation proceedings are farces scripted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who cares nothing for democracy. His reign as majority leader, capped until now by his ability to deny a vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, is an example of power absent ethics.
McConnell is using that power to rush a vote on Kavanaugh before more damning allegations surface and before the November election. The women accusing Kavanaugh of assault, Senate Democrats and even some Kavanaugh supporters have all asked that the confirmation vote be postponed pending an FBI investigation, one McConnell and President Trump refuse to authorize.
Unless an impartial investigation by the FBI clears his name, Kavanaugh, as a Supreme Court judge, will have no credibility and the court that once stood as an impartial arbiter of the law will lose another modicum of respect earned over two centuries.
Ford will be questioned, not by the 11 Republican members of the committee, not a woman among them, but by a female hired gun – prosecutor of sex crimes and fellow Republican. Smart on the senators’ part, given their propensity to say oafish things? Yes. Cowardly? Certainly.
Watch the hearing if you have the stomach for it. It may shed some light on whether Kavanaugh was the choir boy he claims to have been or a party animal who abused women. It may help senators decide whether Trump’s nominee is truthful enough to deserve a seat on the Supreme Court, but we doubt it. That would take more scrutiny than Republicans are willing to approve.