This week, the United States continues to face the controversy surrounding President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the nation’s Supreme Court. He’s been credibly accused of sexual assault by a number of women, and after substantive public pressure, a renewed FBI look at his background finally got underway.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says that investigative efforts should — and will — have a different focus, though. He explained to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he’s going to be pushing for a federal inquiry into who let the allegations against Kavanaugh get out in the first place, because apparently credible sexual assault allegations against a potential future member of the U.S. Supreme Court aren’t worth public scrutiny.
Similar to Republicans’ behavior in response to the Russia scandal, Graham remains more concerned about the process unfolding than he is about the allegations at the center of the process. He bemoaned the fact that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story of assault at Kavanaugh hands ever made it out of California Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s U.S. Senate office.
Graham ranted to Stephanopoulos:
‘The FBI will do a supplemental background investigation. Then I’m going to call for an investigation of what happened in this [Senate Judiciary] committee — who betrayed Dr. Ford’s trust, who in Feinstein’s office recommended [Debra] Katz as a lawyer, why did Ms. Ford not know that the committee was willing to go to California, who released the anonymous letter given to the committee by Cory Gardner.’
The South Carolina U.S. Senator’s Sunday appearance on ABC is hardly the first time that he or another Republican have raised similar concerns.
During a Thursday hearing featuring Ford and Kavanaugh, multiple Republicans brought up the charge that Feinstein’s office had something to do with Ford’s story making it to the press. The California Democrat insisted she had nothing to do with it, which Graham told Stephanopoulos he believes — but he’s much less willing to accept that no one in her office pushed the story, despite an assertion to the contrary from one of the first journalists on the case.
He’s ranted multiple times in multiple venues about the supposed travesty of the process Kavanaugh is facing. He’s convinced — as the judge himself claims to be — that it’s an orchestrated political hit, as if there’s some kind of secret society of Democrats plotting to push accusers into the public sphere. Graham has claimed to have respect for Ford, but he can’t have it both ways. His claim that she’s a pawn in what’s essentially a conspiracy trumps his lip service to respect.
During the same airing of This Week featuring Graham, Hawaii Democrat and Senate Judiciary Committee member Mazie Hirono noted the absurdity of the situation.
She noted:
‘He came out at that [Thursday] hearing… as someone that would accuse Democrats of some kind of a vast conspiracy to do him in, and even dragged in Hillary Clinton. I found that bizarre, but we hardly need somebody on the Supreme Court who has these conspiracy theory notions.’
Whether sufficient numbers of her Senate colleagues agree to keep Kavanaugh off the U.S. Supreme Court will soon enough be found out. Three Republicans are considered on the fence — Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake — and the GOP can only afford to lose one. Collins and Murkowski have helped sink key GOP policy (the 2017 health care reform plan) in the past.
Featured Image via screenshot from the video
