Less than a day after The Intercept reported that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) received a letter that purportedly details an “incident” involving Trump Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh and “a woman while they were in high school,” Feinstein announced in a statement on Thursday that she has referred the secret document to the FBI.
“I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Feinstein said. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”
“This matter has been referred to the FBI for investigation,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il.) told BuzzFeed when asked about the letter.
News that a letter about a judge who is up for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court has been sent to the FBI “seems like a pretty big deal,” political analyst Matt McDermott noted in response to Feinstein’s statement.
This, uh, seems like a pretty big deal. https://t.co/ZdUwXDGGOw
—Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) September 13, 2018
With a final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination set for next week, rumors regarding the contents of the letter have reportedly been swirling around Capitol Hill in recent days. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have requested to view the document, but Feinstein has refused to give her colleagues access.
According to The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim, “Different sources provided different accounts of the contents of the letter, and some of the sources said they themselves had heard different versions, but the one consistent theme was that it describes an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school.”
“The letter took a circuitous route to Feinstein,” noted Grim, who reported that the document was “relayed to someone affiliated with Stanford University, who authored the letter and sent it to Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat who represents the area.”
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Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams where this was originally published. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep.
“…. an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in HIGH SCHOOL.” Good God, every time I think that our politics cannot become any more bizarre, something tops it. The truly worrying thing is that the public seems to be unable to recognize that they are being fed garbage.
The point is how often and for how long Kavanaugh has declined to stand up for the truth(s) that mark his path/journey to a judgeship seat.
Judges are not supposed to lie, obfuscate, and give non-answers consistently about his own behavior past and present.
Yes. You are right. this time it is behavior while K was in high school.
If its assaultive behavior, the victim decided to speak at this time perhaps feeling that K is not worthy of a judge’s chair in the SCOTUS o
The point is that with all K’s evasive answers there comes a time when he should have the strength of character to face facts head on and speak truth to power. He does not seem to have that strength and his answers are evasive and absolute non-answers.
David Jolly, a former Republican Representative said as much last night. He also said that when running for his congressional seat someone confronted him with an auto accident he’d had +driving while a teenager in which someone else died.
He said that when confronted with the fact he had two choices: be evasive or take it like a man, stand up and tell the truth.
He did. He stood up like a man and told the truth.
He says K should have the strength of character to stand up and tell his truth. On whichever side of the equation his truth falls.
So far it seems K lacks that strength of character that would give him the power to stand up like a man and tell the truth. It seems he has a long journey of zero truth telling and a whole jar full of character flaws . It seems those are not the qualities that should be elevated to a judge’s chair in any court. Much less the SCOTUS chair
We might ask ourselves, in this day of total personal surveillance, who among us could survive a mad dog prosecutor’s well-laid perjury trap? Also, a little story about LBJ. Running for a seat in the Texas legislature, he told his campaign head to circulate charges that his opponent had sex with pigs. The campaign head, shocked, said, “he doesn’t do that!” Of course he doesn’t, LBJ responded, but make him deny it.