On Sept. 28, President Trump announced he had ordered a supplemental FBI investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee. According to Trump, the probe is to be limited in scope and will conclude within a week.
Earlier that day, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate. All Democrats on the Committee voted against him.
For now, the Democrats’ delay tactics to stall Kavanaugh’s confirmation have worked. With a razor-thin majority in the Senate (51 seats), if the Republicans force a floor vote, the odds of defeat are high. With swing senators such as Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Trump had no better alternative but to order the investigation.
I have hard time understanding Flake and Murkowski’s reasoning to advocate an FBI investigation. I watched the footage of the Senate hearing on Sept. 27 carefully. Christine Blasy Ford’s testimonial struck me as believable. Kavanaugh came across as credible, too. His denial was swift and forceful, delivered with righteous indignation.
It is possible that Ford had traumatic experiences such as being a victim of an attempted sexual assault, but the attacker was not Kavanaugh and the attack didn’t happen at the time and location she alleged. The scenario is strongly supported by eyewitnesses named by Ford. All of them, including one of Ford’s long time friends, released sworn statements and unanimously denied the party alleged by Ford and Kavanaugh’s involvement,. What is left for the FBI to investigate?
If Flake and Murkowski’s goal was to placate the Democrats, they barked up the wrong tree. One can’t vanquish one’s enemy by supplying it with ammunition. For the Democrats, the investigation is all about delay.
Dianne Feinstein, the octogenarian senator from California, sat on the letter from Christine Blasey Ford since July. If she had acted in Ford’s best interests, she would either have alerted local authorities or forwarded the letter to the FBI immediately. She did what she did only because she saw Ford as a political pawn, a secret weapon she can employ to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The Democrats shamelessly exploited Ford for political gains, but sought to portray themselves as the consummate philogynists. The irony is too rich.
The Democrats won’t be pacified with a one-week investigation. After Trump’s announcement, Ford’s lawyer immediately called for an open-ended investigation with neither time nor scope limitations. In other words, the Democrats want a redux of the Trump-Russia collusion probe, with the target being Kavanaugh. Like the Russia probe, they probably won’t find anything, but that’s not the point. What’s important is they will have obstructed Kavanaugh’s ascension.
Flake and Murkowski’s motion trapped the Republicans in a dilemma. There’s no win for the GOP. If the investigation doesn’t find any new evidence against Kavanaugh, the Democrats will assail its legitimacy and accuse the Trump administration of coverup; if it unearths new “victims” of Kavanaugh, Flake and Murkowski' will most likely cave and allow more investigation. They may think they are fair-minded and bipartisan, but they are in fact aiding and abetting the Democrats’ delay tactics.
In Thursday’s hearing, it was Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina that surprised me the most. I always thought he is a moderate and eager to reach across the aisle. Yet he totally got it: the hearing was a sham. The Democrats are not interested in the truth; they only care about control and power, even when it means destroying innocents’ lives.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
