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All Of Your Pro-Kavanaugh Vote Arguments Are Trash

I don't know what power Brett Kavanaugh has over the legal community, but y'all need to stop this madness.

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Judge Brett Kavanaugh, being sworn in at his confirmation hearings (screencap via YouTube)

Maybe, he didn’t do it. If you honestly think that the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh are some kind of “hoax” “orchestrated by Democrats” to “sully a good man,” then whatever. Vote him into a lifetime position of unaccountable power. Maybe you know the allegations are false because YOU went back in time in your DeLorean and punched Kavanaugh’s lights out and so now you can trust him to wash your car. Just don’t let your omniscient power fall into the wrong hands.

But if you are like me, a mere mortal who doesn’t know the truth of this matter, then any argument you have that leads to the conclusion of having a vote on Kavanaugh’s fitness for the Supreme Court, THIS WEEK, is total, flaming trash.

I understand why the Kavanaugh allegations make lawyers uncomfortable. There’s a distinct feeling that we are missing any measure of “due process” and it’s hard to be a lawyer and not really, really favor “fair processes.”

But you are forgetting why the process is missing. Process is missing because Brett Kavanaugh was nominated by Donald Trump: one of the laziest men in the entire country, and almost certainly the laziest man to ever inhabit the office of the President of the United States. Kavanaugh was not carefully “vetted” by an executive operation that cares about the integrity of the third branch of government. Trump and his dysfunctional White House are incapable of such tasks.

No, Kavanaugh’s vetting was outsourced to the Federalist Society, a partisan organization more concerned with conservative dogma than it is about integrity of the judicial branch. That’s not a knock on the Federalist Society (trust me, when I knock them, you’ll know). It’s simply not their job to do the work of figuring out if judicial nominees represent the best of who we are as Americans. That’s not their “core-competency.” They’re not built for the work that was outsourced to them. It’s their job to figure out how to take away abortion rights and consign minorities and gays to the back of the bus (see). On that, they do a pretty good job.

Kavanaugh was vetted by the Republicans in the United States Senate. That body is also not concerned about the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike FedSoc, one might argue that the Senate should be. But this is the same group of people who refused to meet with a qualified nominee based on allegations that he was nominated by Barack Obama. The Senate wouldn’t recognize integrity if it set itself on fire on the Senate floor.

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We’re here because nobody responsible to America did their job for America. Trump didn’t, Don McGahn didn’t, Mitch McConnell didn’t, Chuck Grassley didn’t, Dianne Feinstein didn’t. Brett Kavanaugh shouldn’t be in this position, his alleged victim shouldn’t be in this position, and the American people shouldn’t be in this position. All of the people responsible for putting us in this position should lose their jobs.

So, okay, the milk is spilled and it’s sad that the people responsible for figuring out if it was sour failed us. None of us want to be here.

But.. how in the mother-loving world is the response from so, so many of you — on both sides — to say: “Damn… we have no choice now but to lick this potentially sour milk up off the floor. Everybody get down on your knees and slurp.” How can so many of you lack the DIGNITY to be able to say “Swiffer this mess up and pour me another glass. I’LL WAIT!”

We’re not here because of an act of God. We’re here because people screwed up. Now, we have to do the admittedly difficult job of FIXING it. And there’s no way we can do that on an entirely artificial timeline set by when Senators want to go home and campaign. They are partly responsible for CREATING this problem, and now we have to hurry up and vote to make their lives easier? That makes no freaking sense.

The most consistent thing I’ve heard from the “vote now” crowd — besides the aforementioned omniscient among us — is “there’s no point in delaying the vote, because we’ll never know the truth.”

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That’s bullcrap. How can you live in a world where Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer EXIST and fix your mouth to say that? How can you live in a world were Robert Mueller knows what kind of endangered species Paul Manafort hides in his closet, and think that we’ll “never” know.

We’ll know, if we want to. Given enough time, we’ll figure things out. That is the promise of HUMAN REASON.

An investigation will commence. Others will come forward. Patterns will emerge. If Kavanaugh did do this, every single thing we’ve learned from #MeToo tells us that this accuser will not be his only victim. If he didn’t do it, a thorough investigation will puncture the story. We might not ever know EVERYTHING, but we’ll know enough to make an educated guess about the nature of our reality. That is the promise of SCIENCE.

Saying “we’ll never know” as an excuse to go forward with the vote is trash. It’s as unhelpful as saying “gravity is just a theory.” It’s true, but I’d be rightly shocked if I pushed you off a roof and you didn’t fall on your ass.

Another common trash argument is: “The alleged victim has not come forward, so Kavanaugh cannot defend himself.”

The alleged victim is known to the F.B.I. so they can investigate. The alleged victim is also probably known to… Brett Kavanaugh. Despite what Kavanaugh seems intent on making people believe, he does not have freaking amnesia about the events and experiences of his life. Kavanaugh knows what emails he received from Alex Kozinski. He knows who Alex Azar is and why he left his Kozinski clerkship. He knows why he grew “aggressive” after “blowing another game of dice.” And he knows who this woman is. Dude went to an all-boys high-school, he remembers EVERY GIRL he ever thought about for more than two minutes. I don’t know what he did, if anything, but he knows her.

No, the woman not coming forward means YOU, the “Kavanaugh defender” cannot defend him. She hasn’t put herself forward so YOU can make her life hell, in service of a nominee you’ve never met but whose jurisprudence you think you’ll like. That is YOUR problem, not Kavanaugh’s and not the F.B.I.’s.

The trashiest of the trash arguments is that “this happened so long ago.”

Miss me with that crap. Seriously. This man is trying to get a lifetime appointment imbued with the power to define what rights we all have. We need to know if he did these things. This isn’t trying to cause problems for Kavanaugh based on a “youthful indiscretion.” This is an allegation that he tried to rape somebody. The statute of limitations on that… are stupid in a court of law, but they’re wholly irrelevant in an interview for a lifetime job. Kavanaugh couldn’t get a job as a head football coach with these kind of allegations out there [looks at Matt Patricia], well, he couldn’t get a job as a basketball coach… maybe.

This vote has to be stopped. You people need to stop worrying about our lost opportunity at process and start worrying about our shared feelings of common sense and decency. FIRST, figure out if your Supreme Court nominee is an attempted rapist, THEN figure out whether he belongs on the Supreme Court. THAT is the only process that matters now. Anything less is trash.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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