Kavanaugh takes partisan turn as he lashes out at "search and destroy" Democrats

[mahatmakanejeeves]

David Fahrenthold Retweeted:

“Not only was a potential justice on the highest court raging against one of the country’s two major political parties, but he was also leveling a serious allegation — that the process itself was being manipulated.”

Link to tweet

Politics

Kavanaugh takes partisan turn as he lashes out at ‘search and destroy’ Democrats

By Michael Kranish, Emma Brown and Tom Hamburger
September 27 at 9:20 PM

From the moment he began speaking Thursday, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh launched into partisan attack mode.

In a remarkable turnabout from the confirmation hearings earlier this month in which he presented himself as the model of neutrality, Kavanaugh fumed that the sexual assault allegations brought against him in recent days had been a “calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election.” He called it “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and pointed to “millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”

Kavanaugh’s statements marked an extraordinary moment in the history of Supreme Court confirmation battles. Not only was a potential justice on the highest court raging against one of the country’s two major political parties, but he was also leveling a serious allegation — that the process itself was being manipulated.

In her testimony, his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, stressed that, despite having sent her allegations to two Democrats in Congress, she viewed herself as nonpartisan. ... “I am nobody’s pawn,” she said. ... But over the course of Thursday’s hearing, partisan tensions repeatedly boiled over as Republicans echoed Kavanaugh’s claim that the Democrats had engineered the process to ensure his demise in the final weeks before the midterm elections.
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Michael Kranish is a national political investigative reporter for The Washington Post. He is the co-author of The Post’s biography "Trump Revealed," as well as biographies of John F. Kerry and Mitt Romney. He previously was the deputy chief of the Washington Bureau of the Boston Globe. Follow https://twitter.com/PostKranish

Emma Brown is a reporter on the investigative team who joined The Washington Post in 2009. Previously, she wrote obituaries and covered local and national education. Follow https://twitter.com/emmersbrown

Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics. Follow https://twitter.com/thamburger

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. And just like that... A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates

And just like that...

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POLITICS

A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates

Gamble v. United States isn’t related to the Russia investigation. But the outcome—which one senior Republican senator has tried to influence—could still have consequences for the probe.

NATASHA BERTRAND
SEP 25, 2018

A key Republican senator has quietly weighed in on an upcoming Supreme Court case that could have important consequences for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The Utah lawmaker Orrin Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a 44-page amicus brief earlier this month in [link:http://|Gamble v. United States], a case that will consider whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine should be put to rest. The 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense. According to the brief he filed on September 11, Hatch believes the doctrine should be overturned. “The extensive federalization of criminal law has rendered ineffective the federalist underpinnings of the dual sovereignty doctrine,” his brief reads. “And its persistence impairs full realization of the Double Jeopardy Clause’s liberty protections.”

Within the context of the Mueller probe, legal observers have seen the dual-sovereignty doctrine as a check on President Donald Trump’s power: It could discourage him from trying to shut down the Mueller investigation or pardon anyone caught up in the probe, because the pardon wouldn’t be applied to state charges. Under settled law, if Trump were to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example—he was convicted last month in federal court on eight counts of tax and bank fraud—both New York and Virginia state prosecutors could still charge him for any crimes that violated their respective laws. (Both states have a double-jeopardy law that bars secondary state prosecutions for committing “the same act,” but there are important exceptions, as the Fordham University School of Law professor Jed Shugerman has noted.) If the dual-sovereignty doctrine were tossed, as Hatch wants, then Trump’s pardon could theoretically protect Manafort from state action.

If Trump were to shut down the investigation or pardon his associates, “the escape hatch, then, is for cases to be farmed out or picked up by state-level attorneys general, who cannot be shut down by Trump and who generally—but with some existing limits—can charge state crimes even after a federal pardon,” explained Elie Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey. “If Hatch gets his way, however, a federal pardon would essentially block a subsequent state-level prosecution.”
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[dalton99a]

2. The process was rigged (RIGGED!) - to get him approved - by the Republican-controlled Senate

Same old election fraud bullshit, taught to him by the master bullshitter