“Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser now has a name, and the Republican Party’s bid to swiftly lift him onto the Supreme Court may be spinning out of control,” CNN reports.
“The coming hours could decide whether the GOP can stabilize the confirmation process of President Trump’s nominee or whether his hopes of being the man to enshrine a conservative majority for a generation could begin to crumble.”
“Actor Tom Arnold and Apprentice producer Mark Burnett reportedly got into a physical confrontation at a Hollywood fundraiser Sunday night, with Arnold claiming Burnett tried to choke him and Burnett’s wife posting a photo of a bruise she says she received during the altercation,” The Hill reports.
“Arnold, who is set to launch The Hunt for the Trump Tapes on Viceland Tuesday night, has publicly lambasted Burnett for months. Arnold has claimed the producer is protecting President Trump by refusing to release outtakes from the The Apprentice that the comic alleges contain Trump using racial slurs. Arnold was once a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice with Trump as host.”
Debra Katz, the attorney for Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault in the 1980s, told NBC News that Ford believes the incident was “attempted rape” and is willing to testify publicly before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Said Katz: “She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth.”
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Secret documents obtained by the Associated Press show that Julian Assange sought a Russian visa in 2010.
“The ex-hacker’s links to the Kremlin would become increasingly salient before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when the FBI says Russia’s military intelligence agency directly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and other Democratic figures.”
Jonathan Swan: “Strategists advising Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh plan to use aggressive tactics this week in response to the public accusation of a ‘stumbling drunk’ sexual assault in high school that instantly imperiled his confirmation.”
“Some involved in the process are going to urge Senate leaders to call on the accuser — Christine Blasey Ford, who went on the record with The Washington Post‘s Emma Brown — to testify publicly this week, ahead of Thursday’s scheduled Judiciary Committee vote. This gambit basically bets that she will decline, and Republicans can then say that they tried to investigate further.”
“A source close to the process said that if Democrats sink Kavanaugh ‘we’ll just bring in someone moreconservative.'”
Debra Katz, Ford’s attorney, told CBS News that Senate Republicans intend to “play hard ball” with her client as they prepare to move ahead with Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Playbook: “In normal times, Brett Kavanaugh would be under tremendous pressure to abandon his bid for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. His accuser — Christine Blasey Ford — has spoken on the record, detailing allegations of sexual assault when they were in high school.”
“But, quite obviously, these are not normal times. And, as of now — that is, early Monday morning — Kavanaugh is still a nominee for the highest court in the land. Republicans say they are still weighing their options, and will figure out if there is a path forward today. (Yes, we are acutely aware that this entire situation can change at the drop of a hat.)”
“If you’re McConnell, the squeaky-clean, fairly easy Supreme Court nominee just made life a lot more complicated. McConnell’s political legacy will be his dogged pursuit of getting more conservative justices. But McConnell knows his members as well as any political leader. If he gets the sense that this is too tough a vote for his members to take, he’s not going to go through with it. And he also certainly is not going to put up a SCOTUS vote that isn’t going to pass.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “has nearly doubled promotions of top American diplomats as he seeks to restore diplomatic ties with a workforce alienated by his predecessor, Rex Tillerson,” Reuters reports.
“Since taking over in April, Pompeo has lavished attention on diplomats demoralized by the former oil executive’s distant management style, reluctance to consult in-house experts and inability to get personnel choices through President Trump’s White House.”
“The charm offensive by the former Republican lawmaker and CIA director includes resuming the hiring of diplomats’ family members when posted abroad, cheerleading emails to staff about his travels and a push to replenish the top ranks of U.S. diplomacy.”
Jonathan Swan: “A source who has seen recent polling, conducted by the Republican National Committee, told me the data show that a majority of Trump voters don’t believe the mountain of evidence that Democrats will win back the House in November.”
Key finding: “57% of strong Trump supporters believe it’s unlikely Democrats win the House.”
“This disbelief freaked out Republican strategists who want their voters to be panicked enough to vote in November.”
Hillary Clinton, writing in The Atlantic:
“It’s been nearly two years since Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes to become president of the United States. On the day after, in my concession speech, I said, ‘We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.’ I hoped that my fears for our future were overblown.”
“They were not. In the roughly 21 months since he took the oath of office, Trump has sunk far below the already-low bar he set for himself in his ugly campaign.”
“Trump and his cronies do so many despicable things that it can be hard to keep track. I think that may be the point—to confound us, so it’s harder to keep our eye on the ball. The ball, of course, is protecting American democracy. As citizens, that’s our most important charge. And right now, our democracy is in crisis.”
A senior White House official told the Daily Beast that, as of Sunday evening, things are still “full steam ahead” for Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court despite allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh tried to rape her while they were in high school.
“The president has told those close to him in recent days that he believes there is a ‘conspiracy’ or organized effort by Democrats to smear Kavanaugh and try to derail the nomination of a ‘good man.’ One Trump confidant said on Sunday that they ‘can’t imagine that’ Ford coming forward will change the president’s position, and that it will far more likely cause Trump to dig in and attack those going after Kavanaugh.”
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told Politico that the vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court should be postponed until the woman accusing him of sexual assault be allowed to speak with senators on the Judiciary Committee.
Said Corker: “I think that would be best for all involved, including the nominee.”
Reason: “Some are making a big deal out of the fact that Christine Blasey Ford took a polygraph, and the allegation was deemed credible. This is actually a comparatively weak piece of evidence in Ford’s favor. Lie detectors can be gamed, and the scientific community is conflicted on their overall reliability.”
“But other circumstantial evidence gives some weight to Ford’s claims. Kavanaugh’s friend, Mark Judge, is a conservative commentator who strongly denied Ford’s accusation when it was made anonymously… Judge is also the author of two books that address his own alcoholism throughout his teen years — Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk and God and Man at Georgetown Prep.”
Meanwhile, Mother Jones “suggests that Judge might simply not remember the incident in question. The article also draws attention to another passage from the Georgetown Prep book, in which Judge makes reference to friend, ‘Bart O’Kavanaugh,’ who ‘puked in someone’s car the other night’ and passed out on the way back from a party. And the Georgetown Prep yearbook entry for Kavanaugh makes reference to his membership in the ‘Keg City Club.'”
“That the teenage Kavanaugh was a notorious drinker and party boy while in high school does not confirm what Ford has said about him. But it does make it somewhat easier to believe Ford’s claim.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told the Washington Post that Christine Blasey Ford, who claims that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her while they were in high school, “must be heard” and urged the Senate Judiciary Committee not to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination until it has a chance to hear more from her.
Said Flake: “I’ve made it clear that I’m not comfortable moving ahead with the vote on Thursday if we have not heard her side of the story or explored this further.”
Flake is one of the committee’s 21 members. Republicans hold a 11-to-10 majority on the panel.
Jonathan Swan: “Since the story broke, I’ve spoken to four sources close to the Kavanaugh confirmation process. All were defiant and sought to raise doubts about the accuser’s credibility and the holes in her story — though none were willing to do so on the record.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) “and a growing number of Senate Democrats are calling for the Senate to postpone a vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a woman accusing him of sexual assault spoke publicly about the allegation,” The Hill reports.
Said Schumer: “Senator Grassley must postpone the vote until, at a very minimum, these serious and credible allegations are thoroughly investigated. For too long, when woman have made serious allegations of abuse, they have been ignored. That cannot happen in this case.”
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said the nomination “should be put on hold until the FBI conducts an investigation.”
“I’m fairly confident that our founding fathers did not intend the process to work this way. So far it’s pretty much been an intergalactic freak show.”
— Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), quoted by The Hill, on the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Christine Blasey Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk” — “corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County,” the Washington Post reports.
“While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.”
Also interesting: “She engaged Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer known for her work on sexual harassment cases. On the advice of Katz, who believed Ford would be attacked as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent in early August. The results, which Katz provided to The Post, concluded that Ford was being truthful when she said a statement summarizing her allegations was accurate.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden told the audience at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner that he wished he has spoken out against President Trump sooner, the New York Post reports.
Said Biden: “Barack and I agreed we would be quiet for the first year to let the new administration get up and running. God forgive me.”
“He’s not going to survive Manafort’s testimony… I think there’s a substantial possibility that this evidence that Manafort is offering will implicate somebody up the chain.”
— Former White House ethics lawyer Norman Eisen, in an interview on ABC News, saying that he believes this is “not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning for Donald Trump.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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