Confirmed to the Supreme Court

A quick background.

On June 21, 2018 in a letter to President Trump, a Supreme Court Justice announced he would transition to senior status effective July 31. This was effectively his retirement and created an opening in the Supreme Court to be filled. Then on July 9, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill the role on the Supreme Court.

Starting on September 4, the Senate Judiciary Committee began what was supposed to be a three to four day hearing, which was basically a job interview, asking questions about past rulings he had made as a federal judge. After this concluded, on September 12, Senator Dianne Feinstein confirmed that a woman, later identified as Christine Blasey Ford, had accused Judge Kavanaugh of attempting to force himself on her in the early 1980s when they were in high school. Judge Kavanaugh then released a statement denying these claims through a White House statement on September 16.

Ford had named a lifelong friend, Leland Ingram Keyser, as being present at the high school party. But Keyser released a statement through her attorney saying she did not know Kavanaugh, had no memory of the party or any sexual assault.

On September 27, the Committee held an additional day of hearings to question Christine Blasey Ford about her accusations and then to question Judge Kavanaugh about them. After the two were questioned, the FBI did a probe into the matter and found no corroborating evidence to Ford’s claims. Finally on October 6, the Senate voted Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

And now to what I think on the whole thing. Ford’s witness had no recollection of the event and Ford herself didn’t know the date or location of the party. The number of people at the party has even changed from when she told her therapist back in 2012 which said there were four boys in the room to when she testified before the committee and she said it was only Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge in the room. I can understand her forgetting the some of the details about the night the incident happened since it allegedly took place over 35 years ago, but she also couldn’t remember if she had given the therapist’s notes to the Washington Post reporter or if she just summarized them.

Some people were upset about how angry Kavanaugh was when they questioned him about the alleged assault but I believe most people would be just as angry if the media had called them a rapist for the two weeks leading up to the moment you get to defend yourself. Kavanaugh provided diaries from that summer showing he was out of town; Ford produced no evidence. The Judiciary Committee even released a letter signed by 65 women who had known Kavanaugh for more than 35 years stating that Kavanaugh had behaved honorably and respected women.

I’m not denying Ford was assaulted, she definitely might have been, but after almost 35 or more years she could have forgotten some of the details. It possibly could’ve been a different man who did it to her and she was pushed to claiming it was Judge Kavanaugh. The FBI has already done six different background checks on Kavanaugh and nothing involving anything sexual in nature had come up.

I believe the whole thing was politically motivated because the democrats were trying to stall the vote until after the midterm elections when they think they will end up with a majority senate. Something weird that came up is that she took a polygraph test on August 7, a whole month before she even decided to go to a reporter about it. It makes it look as if some senators were preparing her just in case it looked as if Kavanaugh would be approved, and when the time came they brought her forward.

This is a difficult topic to discuss because you want to believe people and give other people who have been assaulted the courage to come forward and put their assailants behind bars. But you also have to look at the facts and the evidence and that points to Kavanaugh being a good man.