Rough Horse Play
Carrie Severino, spokesperson of the campaign arm for Republican judicial nominations, now says that it’s not clear that what Ford describes wasn’t simply “rough horse play” as opposed to attempted rape. Combined with the strangely muted comments by Don Jon, it seems as if Kavanaugh may have been lying when he denied “anything” happened. READMORE ON TPM
His handling of these charges from high school also reflect on the issue of justice. Kavanaugh may be a good man today but that is hardly enough, His appointment after the debacle of Merrick Garland ought to upset Judge Kavanaugh’s sense of the idea that the courts should be about justice. Kavanaugh should answer questions about the process itself. Does he feel it is fair .. not just legal?
He claimed not that he had no memory but that it never happened? Did Did Brett Kvanaugh lie? Would he waffle and try as Clinton did to dismiss the charge because rough housing is not rape?
Why not testify about his more general behavior at this all boy’s school? If, as Dr. Ford’s classmates from that era claim, young Kavanaugh was a thug, how does Judge Kavanaugh feel that affected him as he grew older? Would he take a lie detector test? As a prestigious alum, what does he do now about male behavior at the all boy schools he went to?
Meantime, Mark Judge, the man who Christine Blasey Ford has said was in the room while Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her when they were in high school, has refused to testify. Mr Judge, now a far right columnist for the Daily Standard said, through his lawyer, “I did not ask to be involved in this matter nor did anyone ask me to be involved. The only reason I am involved is because Dr. Christine Blasey Ford remembers me as the other person in the room during the alleged assault. In fact, I have no memory of this alleged incident. Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.”
The problem here is that Judge is not fully answering the question about what else might have happened at the boys’s school. Is he accusing Dr. Ford of lying? If she repeats her story under oath, that would be perjury. Is he willing to defend his friend by calling Dr. Ford a perjurer? Could she just be recalling an episode with two other boiys? Would he be willing to say that stories like this did not happen at Georgetown Preparatory School?
Senator .Susan Collins has indicated that lying about the alleged assault, rather than the act itself, would be “disqualifying.” I see the difference but would also say that any effort to play word games with the law and to withhold any feelings of his own should also be disqualifying. This goes further. Kavanaugh has also refused to give an insights into his views of whether Trump is in fact immune to criminal charges as long as he is President. That issue goes beyond law, it is a fundamental issue of Judge Kavanaugh’s ethics.
