September 29, 2018
How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying
This man should not serve another day as any kind of judge…
by Nathan J. Robinson

Not quite. The existence of a “he said, she said” does not mean it’s impossible to figure out the truth. It means we have to examine what he said, and what she said, as closely as possible. If both parties speak with passion and clarity, but one of them says many inconsistent, evasive, irrational, and false things, while the other does not, then we actually have a very good indicator of which party is telling the truth. If a man claims to be innocent, but does things—like carefully manipulate words to avoid giving clear answers, or lie about the evidence—that you probably wouldn’t do if you were innocent, then testimony alone can substantially change our confidence in who to believe.

In this case, when we examine the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford honestly, impartially, and carefully, it is impossible to escape the following conclusions:

1. Brett Kavanaugh is lying.
2. There is no good reason to believe that Christine Blasey Ford is lying. This does not mean that she is definitely telling the truth, but that there is nothing in what Kavanaugh said that in any way discredits her account.

I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one.

***

But while the FBI investigation may turn up additional useful information, at this point there is absolutely no need for it unless Christine Blasey Ford wants it. It’s completely unnecessary in determining whether Brett Kavanaugh should be on the Supreme Court; even the very limited questions already asked of Kavanaugh have yielded disqualifying answers. Kavanaugh is lying, it’s provable, and that’s all there is to it. Unless you think it’s acceptable to have someone on the federal bench who treats duly sworn oaths as meaningless, the guy shouldn’t be holding any office.

September 29, 2018
How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying
This man should not serve another day as any kind of judge…
by Nathan J. Robinson

Not quite. The existence of a “he said, she said” does not mean it’s impossible to figure out the truth. It means we have to examine what he said, and what she said, as closely as possible. If both parties speak with passion and clarity, but one of them says many inconsistent, evasive, irrational, and false things, while the other does not, then we actually have a very good indicator of which party is telling the truth. If a man claims to be innocent, but does things—like carefully manipulate words to avoid giving clear answers, or lie about the evidence—that you probably wouldn’t do if you were innocent, then testimony alone can substantially change our confidence in who to believe.

In this case, when we examine the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford honestly, impartially, and carefully, it is impossible to escape the following conclusions:

1. Brett Kavanaugh is lying.
2. There is no good reason to believe that Christine Blasey Ford is lying. This does not mean that she is definitely telling the truth, but that there is nothing in what Kavanaugh said that in any way discredits her account.

I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one.

***

But while the FBI investigation may turn up additional useful information, at this point there is absolutely no need for it unless Christine Blasey Ford wants it. It’s completely unnecessary in determining whether Brett Kavanaugh should be on the Supreme Court; even the very limited questions already asked of Kavanaugh have yielded disqualifying answers. Kavanaugh is lying, it’s provable, and that’s all there is to it. Unless you think it’s acceptable to have someone on the federal bench who treats duly sworn oaths as meaningless, the guy shouldn’t be holding any office.

Take his relationship with the ringleader of the “Memogate” scandal. Between 2001 and 2003, two Republican staffers regularly gained unauthorized access to the private computer files of six Democratic senators, including mine, taking 4,670 files on controversial judicial nominees.

Kavanaugh was asked more than 100 times about this scandal in 2004 and 2006. He testified repeatedly that he knew nothing about the source of the information; that he received nothing that even appeared to be prepared by Democratic staff; and that he never suspected anything unusual, or “untoward.”

But emails I released last week show that then-Republican Senate Judiciary Committee counsel Manuel Miranda regularly shared obviously ill-gotten, inside information with Kavanaugh, which Miranda often asked be kept secret. That includes eight pages from a Democratic memo, taken verbatim from me, on a controversial nominee that Kavanaugh was asked to not forward. Emails also show that Miranda told Kavanaugh about a sensitive, private letter that I received on a nominee’s position on abortion — a letter Miranda described as “confidential,” requesting that “no action be taken.” They also show Miranda asked to meet privately at his home to give Kavanaugh “paper” on Democratic senators’ thinking.


Other emails describe meetings we were holding, materials staff were sharing internally, leads we were pursuing, what staffers were advising their senators with the notation “highly confidential,” a private letter I had sent to another senator, and even one from an associate of Miranda with the subject line “spying” with information from a Democratic “mole.” Last week, when confronted with these emails, Kavanaugh testified that this was normal information shared with “friends across the aisle.” As I told Kavanaugh then, I was born at night, but not last night.