At the withered old age of 87, Dianne Feinstein has evidently served her purpose to an increasingly ruthless Democratic-activist complex in search of younger and shinier new toys. Just two years after Feinstein’s office likely served as the source of the explosive leak responsible for the Left’s Hail Mary attempt to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, Jane Mayer has decided that the California senator is expired goods.
Just two years ago, Feinstein’s office was widely seen as the source of the letter to Rep. Anna Eshoo’s office from Christine Blasey Ford that was leaked without the latter’s consent. Although the culprit of the leak was pinpointed, little question remains that in some capacity, Ford’s letter made it either directly or through some conduit from a member of Feinstein’s office, not precluding the possibility of Feinstein herself, to the press. In any case, Mayer pounced, putting one of the most thinly vetted sexual misconduct allegations in recent respectable memory to the pages of the New Yorker. Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, Mayer and colleague Ronan Farrow wrote, alleged that the eventual justice flashed her at an undergrad party.
Of course, upon the most cursory read of Mayer’s article, the story fell apart. Ramirez only committed to the claim after “six days of carefully assessing her memories,” and in a later book researching the allegations against Kavanaugh in further detail, New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly wound up all but exonerating Kavanaugh of the Ramirez claim. As I summarized at the time of their investigation:
So it should come as little surprise that just two years as someone from her office, intentionally or not, acted as the hatchet man against President Trump’s last likely Supreme Court nominee, that Feinstein found herself under Mayer’s fire from a series of dubious sources.
After the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee allowed the respectable confirmation of Trump’s third Supreme Court appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, Feinstein earned a double dose of loathing from the Left. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is currently deciding who will replace Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s seat in the Senate. If Feinstein, the state’s senior senator, were somehow convinced to vacate her seat, Newsom could choose both of the largest state’s new senators.
But let’s give her a chance. What do some of Mayer’s claims look like?
“Many others familiar with Feinstein’s situation describe her as seriously struggling, and say it has been evident for several years,” Mayer writes. “Speaking on background, and with respect for her accomplished career, they say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have. They describe Feinstein as forgetting what she has said and getting upset when she can’t keep up.”
An anonymous aide to another senator of an undisclosed party had to “steer her through a proposed piece of legislation,” reports Mayer.
Inevitably, both the Kavanaugh and Barrett confirmation proceedings take center stage, with Mayer claiming that “inevitably,” the Ford allegation “leaked elsewhere to the media,” and insinuating that Feinstein’s 2017 comments about Barrett’s Catholic faith were a product of her advanced age and not her own political biases.
Mayer, who penned a dubious defense of credibly accused serial predator Al Franken even after the since-resigned Minnesota senator has become persona non grata in Democratic circles, has given the Left a thinly sourced gift. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer already ensured that Feinstein wouldn’t maintain her status as ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, and now the seeds are sown for Newsom to handpick her successor. And the revolution once again proves it never eats its most faithful agents last.
