How Trump and the GOP Plan to Keep Fighting Kavanaugh’s Accusers

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Last updated on October 12th, 2018 at 04:05 am

Nobody expected Donald Trump to give in easily. Despite new allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh the president remains defiant and combative and has no intentions of withdrawing Kavanaugh’s nomination.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

“The White House and Brett Kavanaugh issued swift denials Sunday night after an explosive new account emerged of alleged sexual misconduct by the Supreme Court nominee when he was in college, adding greater disarray to a nomination already sullied by an earlier charge of sexual abuse.”

“This alleged event from 35 years ago did not happen. The people who knew me then know that this did not happen, and have said so. This is a smear, plain and simple,” Kavanaugh said of the latest allegation, adding that he would defend himself at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for Thursday.”

White House spokeswoman Kerri Kupec later issued a statement denouncing the New Yorker article as “a Democratic-inspired effort to tear down a good man.” She said the White House “stands firmly behind” Kavanaugh, in what appears to be an increasingly threatened and embattled nomination.

So what is the GOP strategy for fighting these latest accusations?

According to Axios, the Republican strategy is simple: claim that Kavanaugh’s accusers are wrong because their memories are bad and the events happened so long ago.

According to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan:

“Brett Kavanaugh‘s allies plan to aggressively contest what they call the ‘foggy memories’ of his accusers — an approach that’s likely to lead to nasty confrontations at Thursday’s showdown hearing on his confirmation to the Supreme Court. What’s happening: The plan is to fight back right away, and to emphasize denials and hazy recollections. And the mission is to portray the debate as cheap-shot politics orchestrated by liberals and abetted by the media.”

According to Swan, these are the key points in the GOP defense of Kavanaugh:

In the allegation of Dr. Christine Ford, three other people at the party have no recollection of it.
In the second case disclosed last night in The New Yorker, where Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez said Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her, The New York Times reported that it had “interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge.”
Kavanaugh gave the Judiciary Committee his calendars from the summer of 1982 which “do not show a party consistent with the description of his accuser.”

This morning presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway has launched another new defense of Kavanaugh — who she complained was being forced to shoulder the burden of countless rape claims as part of the #MeToo movement.

She said the nominee’s denials should be accepted at face value.

“Why does it not matter to anyone that Judge Kavanaugh has said these allegations are false?” Conway said. “He thinks the latest ones show a pattern of a smear campaign against him, and he has said from the beginning that he wasn’t at the party in question 36 years ago in Maryland. All that has to matter.”

Then she said Kavanaugh is being held up as a sacrifice to the #MeToo movement.

“The president wants them both to testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee, set up a process where they both can,” Conway said. “I don’t think one man’s shoulders should bear decades of the #MeToo movement.”

So far Trump, Conway, and all other Republicans have been silent on the information supplied Sunday night by Michael Avenatti. He said he has been retained by a third woman who has multiple witnesses willing to testify that Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge participated in the drugging and gang raping of women at DC house parties in the 1980s.

Late last night Avenatti sent an email to Mike Davis, Chief Counsel for Nominations for U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary which gave details of the shocking new allegations.

The White House and the Judiciary Committee have yet to comment on Avenatti’s email. This means that for now they are still fighting, or perhaps they are just in denial. They may think that the accusations made against Kavanaugh are “no big deal.” But with Avenatti in the fight they will soon learn that the charges are indeed “a big deal.”

The day is coming soon when Republicans will no longer be able to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that none of this is happening.

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Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.