Avenatti's right. Grassley just opened up Pandora's box and gave us access to Kavanaugh.

[Power 2 the People]

Maybe justice will be done.

[link:https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/michael-avenatti-vows-to-put-brett-kavanaugh-on-trial.html|]

Link to tweet

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Avenatti isn't entitled to discovery until there is an active proceeding by the DoJ.

Grassley's referral is bullshit, but unless the DoJ actually acts on the referral there won't be anything for Avenatti to do.

[skylucy]

2. Well, I must admit...after reading the cnbc.com link...

Avenatti pretty much nails Grassley to the wall.

[Wintryjade]

3. I have not seen much of what Avenatti does bare fruit, but I would really like for him to be correct

More than anything, I want Kavanaugh to be taken down. All the way down in total humiliation and shame.

[Power 2 the People]

4. +1

[UniteFightBack]

6. He may not get the fruit but he sure does know how to shake that tree. nt

[Wintryjade]

11. Yes he does. He does shake that tree, lol.

[colorado_ufo]

15. Great post!

[pnwmom]

13. His action has already borne fruit. I'm sure no investigation will be happening, despite Grassley's

referral.

[onenote]

5. Probably not.

Targets of criminal investigations don't get pre-indictment discovery, so he doesn't get "access" to anyone unless and until an indictment is handed down by a grand jury. At that point, Avenatti can seek to depose relevant witnesses, which almost certainly would include Kavanaugh. But the scope of that questioning would be very narrow -- limited to the issue of whether particular statements by Avenatti and/or Swetnick to the Committee were false or misleading. Kavanaugh already has given a sworn statement to the Committee and assuming that he is questioned again as part of a new criminal investigation into Avenatti and/or Swetnick's statements, there is no reason to think that he won't repeat the same denials he made in his Committee statement and that he'd repeat those denials yet again if deposed by Avenatti.

Having read Grassley's letter, which doesn't make much of a case for prosecuting Avenatti and/or Swetnick, I doubt anything comes of this in the long run.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Avenatti has a pretty big hat, but so far I haven't seen many cattle.

[JimGinPA]

17. I Wonder If Michael Cohen Would Argue That Point With You

I'm not a big fan of Avenatti myself, but he's the one who caused Cohen to be raided by the FBI, prompting him to flip and setting off a whole chain of events that have yet to be played out. tRump's bookkeeper, Allen Weisselberg, was given immunity and agreed to cooperate, as was David Pecker from the National Enquirer, as a result of documents seized in those raids.

So I guess we'll have to wait a bit to see how big his hat is in relation to the cattle he gets rounded up in the end.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. Actually no. The feds were investigating Cohen before Avenatti filed

the Daniels case. They just didn’t blab what they were up to. Cohen’s name appeared in the Steele dossier months previously but Mueller referred the case to SDNY when they discovered unrelated financial stuff. Avenatti had nothing to do with any of that.

[JimGinPA]

23. Yeah, No.

Avenatti provided proof of an actual crime, which lead to the raids. But since your mind is made up I won't try and confuse you with the facts any further. It's obviously a waste of my time.

[LBM20]

18. A billions dollars paid by people he has taken to court in verdicts and settlements. He FIGHTS!

[triron]

10. Probably not what?

Avenatti is speaking figuratively it seems to me.

[pnwmom]

14. There is no way Kavanaugh will want this to get to an indictment stage,

because then he would be required to answer questions. And they won't be so narrow, since her disputed statements are related to parties where alcohol was spiked and groups of boys raped girls. And Avenatti says he has 9 collaborating witnesses.

By the way, I never heard that he gave a sworn statement about Swetnick to the Committee. Do you have a link about that?

The funniest part of this is that Avenatti ASKED for an FBI investigation of the charges. Now Grassley wants to give them one!

https://www.statesman.com/news/20180926/latest-kavanaugh-fending-off-3rd-accusation

Michael Avenatti tells The Associated Press that his client won’t consider the committee’s request until it agrees to his demand for an FBI investigation of the accusation. He says doing the interview today would be “ridiculous.”

Avenatti represents Julie Swetnick. She’s accusing the Supreme Court nominee of sexual misconduct in the early 1980s.

SNIP

A former girlfriend of Mark Judge, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s high school friend, is willing to speak to the FBI and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Elizabeth Rasor has said Judge told her that he and other teens took turns having sex with a drunken woman when they were in high school.

Rasor’s attorney says in a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press that her client would “welcome the opportunity to share this information.”

Rasor met Judge in college and was in a relationship with him for about three years. She told The New Yorker that Judge told her he was ashamed of the incident.

[onenote]

19. Agreed. And a clarification.

I should have been more precise: Kavanaugh's statement to the Committee regarding Swetnick's allegations was made under penalty of perjury (but that doesn't necessarily mean it was "sworn&quot .

See Grassley's letter for more: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-10-25%20CEG%20to%20DOJ%20FBI%20(Swetnick%20and%20Avenatti%20Referral)_Redacted.pdf

I agree Kavanaugh probably doesn't want an indictment of Avenatti or Swetnick; Grassley probably doesn't either. But not because it will necessarily open Kavanaugh up to a wide range of questioning. The issue if there is an indictment, odd as it may seem, will be whether those statements Swetnick made to the Committee (directly or through Kavanaugh) that she said were based on her "personal knowledge" were false or misleading. To the extent she made statements that "she heard" certain things about Kavanaugh, those statements aren't likely to open the door to questions since those aren't statements based on her personal knowledge.

[pnwmom]

20. Thanks for the link onenote! This is the part I was referring to:

She said that at these parties, which “were a common occurrence in the area and occurred nearly
every weekend during the school year,” she witnessed Brett Kavanaugh participate in what she believed to
be systematic sexual assaults of incapacitated women. “I … witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett
Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room
or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys. I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms
at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room,” Ms. Swetnick declared, and
“[t]hese boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”

If they were going to investigate her allegations, how could they justify not questioning Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, and anyone else she says was there?

How can Grassley accuse her of lying without investigating the truth of what she said?

[regnaD kciN]

8. Wow! We may get solid evidence he perjured himself! Now, all we need...

...to do is impeach and convict him...which will require enough Republicans to get on board to give us a Senate supermajority in favor of removal...never mind.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. Not likely. See post #5.

[trueblue2007]

12. my dream would come true if Kav got impeached over this sex abuse case

[Wintryjade]

16. I am so with you on that.

[Vinca]

22. That's what I thought. Finally . . . an investigation will actually get done.

We're lucky Republicans aren't deep thinkers.