As I wrote last night, it’s very clear Senate Republicans feel empowered by their current stance, telling Blasey Ford it’s on her if she doesn’t accept their terms for testimony. The claim that there’s no basis for an FBI review is false. If they want the FBI to review it they will. But they’re emboldened in their ‘take it or leave it’ stance.

Let’s begin with a simple point. Senate Republicans left a Supreme Court seat vacant for more than a year for simple politics. Any argument that there’s a rush to fill Anthony Kennedy’s seat, on this view, is plainly ridiculous. But I confess I’m still taken aback by the mammoth bad faith and dishonesty of Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley’s argument in this new letter defending the majority’s conduct. Read More

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As more confirmation of what I wrote last night in my fourth installment on the Kavanaugh controversy, the strategy is to corner Blasey Ford and bluff her out of showing up at all.

One plugged-in Republican tells me that several top GOP lawmakers have told colleagues that they hope Ford declines to show up for the hearing even as they issue statements urging her to do so. https://t.co/C9vZOZO1xI

— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 19, 2018

See my whole update here (sub req).

“We have no power to commandeer an Executive Branch agency into conducting our due diligence,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter, explaining why he couldn’t fulfill Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyer’s request for an FBI investigation into her claims.

That’s technically true, Tierney Sneed writes, but glosses over the leverage Senate Committees have in asking the White House to order FBI follow up investigations. “Grassley was among the more aggressive users of that privilege,” one source told her. Read her full analysis here (Prime access).

I’m glad this is getting some attention. Let me quickly walk you through it.

As I noted here, Senate Republicans are pursuing a fairly clear strategy now: bluff Professor Blasey Ford into not appearing on Monday, thus allowing them to move on to a vote and rapid confirmation. But last night Mike Davis, chief counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee – in practice, Chuck Grassley’s chief confirmation process lawyer – got a little too aggressive on Twitter and made the strategy a bit too explicit Read More

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I’m really not sure quite how to capture what just happened. But a major, major player in the conservative/Federalist Society legal establishment in DC just posted a lengthy Twitter thread in which he accuses another alum of Kavanaugh’s high school of assaulting Professor Blasey Ford. (After making the argument he falls back and says he doesn’t know whether the other guy is guilty. But the entire thread is intended to say that he is the culprit and that Kavanaugh is the victim of a wrongful identification.) Read More

Top GOP senate candidate says Blasey Ford accusation no big deal since it didn’t lead to intercourse. “Again, it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere.” Story here from Cam Joseph.

We still have more questions than answers about Ed Whelan’s bizarre twitter thread that accused another Kavanaugh classmate of attacking Prof. Blasey Ford and roiled the already embattled nomination. So for those who didn’t see or would like to read through it again for clues to what happened, here’s the whole thing. Read More