The renewed effort by the New York Times to smear Justice Brett Kavanaugh is not just another media scandal. It should be seen as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for reopening the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh’s past, with the ultimate dream of removing him from office.
As most of you know by now, the Times published a shoddy piece of journalism on Sunday, which had to be amended after Mollie Hemingway highlighted an egregious omission. The piece, an adaptation of a new anti-Kavanaugh book, centers around a second accusation of Kavanaugh thrusting his penis at a Yale classmate. But the original article failed to disclose that the alleged victim would not speak, and that friends said she had no recollection of the incident.
Nonetheless, the story was enough for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Health and Human Services Secretary Julian Castro to call for impeaching Kavanaugh.
Even in stopping short of calling for his impeachment, the traditional liberals (and relative moderates) in the race — Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar — called for more investigation.
“We need to get to the bottom of whether the Trump Administration and Senate Republicans pressured the FBI to ignore evidence or prevented them from following up on leads relating to Justice Kavanaugh’s background investigation, subsequent allegations that arose, and the truthfulness of his testimony to the Senate,” Biden said in a statement, adding, “We must follow the evidence to wherever it leads.”
Klobuchar called the whole process of investigating claims against Kavanaugh during his confirmation a “sham,” saying more leads need to be followed and more documents need to be turned over, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “to do any of this, George, you need a new president.”
It’s important to recall the stakes here. Before Kavanaugh was even nominated, liberals were already bitter over judicial nominations. They viewed Justice Neil Gorsuch’s seat as “stolen” because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had successfully blocked Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland, by denying him a hearing or vote. But while Gorsuch was replacing one of the most conservative members of the Supreme Court and thus not dramatically changing the ideological balance, the replacement of swing vote Anthony Kennedy with somebody more conservative had the potential to shift the court further to the Right, and even put Roe v. Wade at risk. That’s why, before Kavanaugh was even mentioned as the nominee, the Left was prepared to deploy any tactics necessary to undermine any candidate for the court.
With Kavanaugh on the court and no conservative justices above age 71, Democrats have no clear path to regaining a majority on the Supreme Court through normal means in the next presidential term, so they have been exploring alternate means. Several Democratic presidential candidates have already expressed openness to court packing. But the idea of court packing is fraught with peril.
Thus, it seems quite likely at this point that any Democratic president elected in 2020 would be under significant pressure from the Left to, at a minimum, reopen an FBI investigation into Kavanaugh that can be framed as an effort to uncover the truth and ensure the integrity of our institutions. The ultimate goal would be to impeach him, but at a minimum, the hope would be that such an investigation would maintain a cloud over Kavanaugh in hopes of intimidating him into upholding Roe, or delegitimizing any decision overturning the ruling.
