Attention to the Unseen

Benjamin Wittes writes: [I]f I were a senator, I would vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. I would do it both because of Ford’s testimony and because of Kavanaugh’s. For reasons I will describe, I find her account more believable than his. I would also do it because whatever the truth of what happened in the summer of 1982, Thursday’s hearing left Kavanaugh nonviable as a justice. A few days before the hearing, I detailed on this site the advice I would…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove…

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Laurence H. Tribe writes: Much might be said about Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s possible confirmation to the Supreme Court: in terms of his still only partly disclosed professional record, the allegations of sexual assault and his candor, or lack of it, in testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But apart from all that — and apart from whatever the reopened F.B.I. investigation might reveal — the judge himself has unwittingly provided the most compelling argument against his elevation to that court….

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The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say. In a phone call, Mr. Trump instructed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to seek a restraining order against the former adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a confidential arbitration proceeding, one of the people said. Messrs. Trump and Cohen had learned shortly before that Ms….

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David Corn writes: At Thursday’s historic and dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Judge Brett Kavanaugh issued a fiery and angry response to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexually assaulting her more than three decades ago. An upset Kavanaugh—who alternated between bursts of belligerence and tear-suppressing sniffles—assailed the hearing as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit.” He railed against “outside left-wing opposition groups” and claimed this “circus” was a Democratic plot fueled by “revenge on…

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Mother Jones reports: A former colleague of Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor hired by Senate Republicans to question Christine Blasey Ford, blasted Mitchell for writing a memo casting doubt on Ford’s allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Matthew Long, a former sex crimes prosecutor who was trained by Mitchell in the Maricopa County, Arizona, attorney’s office, told Mother Jones the memo was “disingenuous” and inconsistent with Mitchell’s own practices as a prosecutor. “I’m very disappointed in my former…

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James Comey writes: F.B.I. agents are experts at interviewing people and quickly dispatching leads to their colleagues around the world to follow with additional interviews. Unless limited in some way by the Trump administration, they can speak to scores of people in a few days, if necessary. They will confront people with testimony and other accounts, testing them and pushing them in a professional way. Agents have much better nonsense detectors than partisans, because they aren’t starting with a conclusion….

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Yascha Mounk writes: At this moment of feverishly intense partisanship, it takes a great deal of courage to tiptoe away from your own tribe. Sen. Jeff Flake has not yet announced that he is willing to part for good; in the end, he may yet betray his professed principles and cast his vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. And yet, we should not underestimate how much strength it took for him to demand an investigation into Christine Blasey Ford’s serious allegations…

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Caleb Mason, a litigator and former federal prosecutor, writes: There’s nothing arcane or even particularly difficult about the investigatory steps the government could take to reach a reasonable factual conclusion about the Kavanaugh allegations. I simply cannot understand why the Judiciary Committee refuses to use the resources it has—namely, subpoena power, through which the committee can compel witnesses to testify and produce documents. The committee’s approach to the Kavanaugh hearings reinforces the false image of trial practice as just throwing…

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Mark Joseph Stern writes: On Wednesday, attorney Michael Avenatti revealed a sworn declaration by his client, Julie Swetnick, alleging that, while in high school, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh targeted women for group sexual assault. Swetnick’s horrific allegations, put forth under penalty of perjury, describe “numerous boys” drugging and raping young women in Maryland during the early 1980s. Her declaration contradicts Kavanaugh’s statements while bolstering the accusation of Christine Blasey Ford, who claims a very drunken Kavanaugh and his friend…

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The Washington Post reports: On Monday night, Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh said in a nationally televised interview that in his younger years, he was focused on sports, academics and “service projects.” But it was his comments about drinking that rankled some Yale University classmates, prompting them to speak out for the first time. Liz Swisher, who described herself as a friend of Kavanaugh in college, said she was shocked that — in an interview focused largely on his…

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Mike Zubrensky writes: From August 2010 to January 2017, I served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. In the role, I supervised the vetting of about 300 judicial nominees and reviewed the FBI’s background investigation report for each nominee. We initiated a supplemental investigation of a judicial nominee on numerous occasions. These would occur after the FBI had already conducted basic background vetting, but when there were factual discrepancies in an FBI…

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