Judiciary Committee Chair Lays Down the Law on Libs Trying To Delay Kavanaugh's Confirmation
This week, due to Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York demanded, yet again, that Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination be delayed.
There was only the most tenuous connection possible to Cohen’s guilty plea, mind you, but that didn’t stop Schumer from issuing the same demand he had used numerous times before.
Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa issued a pretty unequivocal response to Sen. Schumer’s request. Here’s the TL;DR version: “Nope.”
In an unintentionally hilarious piece of desperation delivered from the Senate floor, Schumer called the president an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Cohen case and said that it should be “a game changer” in the Kavanaugh nomination. (Unrelated note: I’d like to call for a permanent ban on the use of the phrase “game changer” in any political context. I understand this is probably against the First Amendment, but the Democrats don’t care about the amendment either and I think this is a much more worthwhile abrogation of our unalienable rights.)
“A president, identified as an unindicted co-conspirator of a federal crime — an accusation made not by a political enemy but by the closest of his own confidants — is on the verge of making a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court,” Schumer desperately implored an indifferent nation. “A court that may someday soon determine the extent of the president’s legal jeopardy.”
This morning I reiterated my call for the Republican majority to delay Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. #WhatsAtStake pic.twitter.com/fIZkTs4ljN
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 23, 2018
“In my view: the Senate Judiciary Committee should immediately pause the consideration of the Kavanaugh nomination. The majority of the Senate still has not seen the bulk of Judge Kavanaugh’s record. At the very least, the very least, it is unseemly for the President of the United States to be picking a Supreme Court Justice who could soon be, effectively, a juror in a case involving the president himself.
“In light of these facts, I believe Chairman Grassley has scheduled the hearing for Judge Kavanaugh too soon, and I’m calling on him to delay the hearing.”
“The majority of the Senate” actually has “seen the bulk of Judge Kavanaugh’s record,” and those which the National Archives refuse to release deal with his tenure with the Bush administration between 2003 and 2006; if anything about the Cohen case can be discerned from those, Michael Cohen plays an amazing long game when it comes to committing the campaign finance violations he’s agreed to plead guilty to or the Democrats believe “Minority Report” is actually a documentary.
Anyhow, Grassley wasn’t impressed.
“It is so regretful that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have politicized this process so much,” Grassley said in remarks where he noted the “clear precedent” in moving forward with such a nomination, one which I’m sure Schumer isn’t too peeved about.
“In 1994, President Clinton nominated Justice Breyer to the Supreme Court,” Grassley said. “At that time, President Clinton was under investigation by Independent Counsel Robert Fiske in connection with the Whitewater land deal.”
In a letter to Schumer on July 25, Grassley was even more delightfully indelicate.
“You urge me to … request all documents pertaining to Judge Kavanaugh’ s tenure as White House Staff Secretary,” Grassley wrote.
“Although your letter contains your position as to the importance of the Staff Secretary position, it does not explain how these records will provide senators any meaningful insight into Judge Kavanaugh’s legal thinking in light of the fact that Judge Kavanaugh has served as a federal appellate judge for more than twelve years on the D.C. Circuit. During that time, he has written more than 300 opinions and joined hundreds more, weighing in on some of today’s most significant legal issues. These materials are by far the most relevant to evaluating Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness for the bench.”
Oh, and then there was the epic closing, where Grassley more or less revealed Schumer’s motives.
“Finally, I am skeptical that your request for Staff Secretary documents is made in good faith,” he wrote. “After all, you stated that you will oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation ‘with everything (you’ve) got.’ Just yesterday, another Democratic senator made the galling comment that supporters of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination are ‘complicit’ in ‘evil.’ If most Democrats have already made up their minds about Judge Kavanaugh, given the considerable record already available for review, I fail to see how additional documents will be useful.”
Grassley concluded by saying he wasn’t “going to put American taxpayers on the hook for the Democrats’ fishing expedition, especially when many on your side have already said that they will oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation.”
In short, Kavanaugh’s nomination will begin Sept. 4, no matter how “complicit” in “evil” with an “unindicted co-conspirator” the Democrats want to believe Kavanaugh is.
Watching them try to smear him in the most desperate of ways will certainly be fun, though.
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