Will Kavanaugh Get Borked?
Published at 08:14 on 19 September 2018
If Ford refuses to appear, Kavanaugh gets approved. Just consider the basic facts in such a scenario:
- It’s about an alleged incident that happened over thirty years ago, when the nominee was in high school.
- There’s only a single allegation.
- The one making the allegation is unwilling to testify under oath about it.
Furthermore, this is today’s GOP we’re talking about. There’s very little that’s too low for them. But revisit the above list: even if that wasn’t the case, we’d still be talking about a single allegation over something that happened decades ago in high school.
Even if Ford appears and puts forth a highly credible testimony, it’s at worst a crap shoot, because the GOP’s standards are so low: it would be entirely in their character to send a rapist to the Supreme Court if said rapist seems likely to legislate from the bench in ways they approve.
Even if Kavanaugh gets approved, this is not necessarily over. Suppose he gets approved. Suppose also that Ford refuses to testify. Note that Kavanaugh has said he will testify about the alleged incident regardless. Now suppose also other allegations, later in life and highly credible, surface. Suppose one of them results in a criminal conviction. Now we have a criminal sitting on the Supreme Court who lied about his past crimes in order to get there. We’re talking about impeachment material here.
Even if no other allegations surface and it becomes increasingly clear that Kavanaugh lied to the Senate under oath to secure his approval, we’re still talking about impeachment material. Perjury is a crime.
Therefore, it may literally be years before this thing fully plays out.