Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has decided to play hardball with the California professor who is accusing a Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault and attempted rape when both were high school students.
Republicans on the Committee decided to schedule a hearing with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for Monday, before even asking her if she was interested and able to testify. Almost immediately, Republicans like Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) spoke before TV cameras telling America that they had not heard back from Dr. Blasey Ford.
On Tuesday they did.
Through her attorney Dr. Blasey Ford said she believes an investigation conducted by the FBI would be the appropriate first step.
That was a logical response, and one that adds to her credibility. People who lie rarely call the on cops to investigate.
An FBI investigation is not so she would have a different story to tell, but so the Senators would have more information on which to base their questions, both to her and to Judge Kavanaugh.
Unsurprisingly, Chairman Grassley and many other Republicans immediately rejected the idea of additional information. After all, they’ve hidden from sight 90 percent of the documents in Kavanaugh’s background. Why would this be any different?
Chairman Grassley has now responded to Dr. Blasey Ford’s request: denied.
Echoing the president’s false claim, Senator Grassley in a letter to her attorneys tells Dr. Blasey Ford, “It is not the FBI’s role to investigate a matter such as this.”
That’s false, as several experts, Republicans and Democrats alike, have noted. Among them, a George W. Bush era nominee who background investigation was reopened.
Grassley presses the point.
“The job of assessing and investigating a nominee’s qualifications in order to decide whether to consent to the nomination is ours, and ours alone.”
Perhaps, but this investigation isn’t about Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications, it’s about his moral character – which is already in doubt as he has been proven to have lied several times to the Senate already.
“You have stated repeatedly that Dr. Ford wants to tell her story. I sincerely hope that Dr. Ford will accept my invitation to do so, either privately or publicly, on Monday,” Grassley’s letter reads.
And even though Sen. Grassley in his letter says it may be possible for Committee members to visit with her in California, Republicans would like nothing more than for Dr. Blasey Ford to refuse to testify at all.
But now that at least one schoolmate of Dr. Blasey Ford has announced that she knew Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, and remembers that “many of us heard about” the alleged attack “in school,” perhaps Republicans will be forced to add her to a growing list of potential witnesses, like Mark Judge, and others who should testify.
Here’s the letter in full: