Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
A Democratic member of the powerful House Judiciary Committee says there’s “no question” alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury by lying to Congress during his confirmation hearings last fall — and that the Judiciary Committee is “likely to take that up.”
“There’s no question he [Kavanaugh] committed perjury during the confirmation hearings,” Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) said Friday in response to a question from a supporter about Kavanaugh.
Neguse did not offer details about which statements from Kavanaugh were lies. But Kavanaugh has been accused of lying to Congress on many, many subjects — from trivial ones, like the meaning of certain inside jokes from high school, to serious ones, like whether he knew about or used stolen emails from Democrats during his time in the George W. Bush administration.
Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in the summer of 2018, and credible allegations of attempted rape and other sexual assaults soon followed. In a high-profile second confirmation hearing, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford described an incident when a drunk Kavanaugh forced himself on her and attempted to rape her. Both were in high school at the time.
Even though Kavanaugh was belligerent and visibly unstable when he denied the allegations, a Republican Senate majority decided to place yet another man accused of criminal sexual activity, the second after Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court.
But allegations of perjury against Kavanaugh persisted. For example, Kavanaugh claimed he never drank alcohol to the point of blacking out. Several of his colleagues from college strongly disputed this claim. “There’s no problem with drinking beer in college,” one said. “The problem is lying about it.”
Vox laid out several other instances where Kavanaugh seemed to, at a minimum, fail to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Neguse’s comments about a possible congressional investigation line up with statements Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) made before the 2018 midterm elections. At the time, Nadler promised to open an investigation if Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives.
“It is not something we are eager to do,” Nadler told the New York Times in October 2018. “But the Senate having failed to do its proper constitutionally mandated job of advise and consent, we are going to have to do something to provide a check and balance, to protect the rule of law and to protect the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.”
In the 2018 midterms, voters across America elected a Democratic majority in order to hold Trump and his corrupt cronies accountable. An investigation into potential perjury by Brett Kavanaugh is exactly what that kind of accountability looks like.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
