US Politics Mega-thread - Page 822

1-3. Ok, so for the first three I found the article I was looking for. Sorry that it’s mainly article of tweets, but sometimes people don’t feel translating their tweets into... articles. Instead of me dealing with it all again I’ll leave this here. But the basic point is, when you look at the context of the entire Q/A time he had with senators, it becomes far more clear what he means in each situation and it clearly doesn’t meet the bar for perjury or even really deception.

https://abovethelaw.com/2018/09/in-defense-of-judge-brett-kavanaugh/

This is far from the only person/article defending his statements as not perjury, but it's the easiest to see links to the other issues.

4. For the drinking ones I actually defer to ReditusSum, who laid it out very well. Your assertion that you don’t believe he was never blackout drunk really is just an opinion. Kavanaugh claimed, and classmates supported (I think), that Kavanaugh had a weak stomach, perhaps he couldn’t down the amount of alcohol required before passing out instead. This is such an individual question that it boggles the mind that one could even conceive of impeaching him for it.

I should point out very explicitly, because this seems lost on some people, that he never denied passing out or drinking too much. His denial was very specific. No blacking out, and no sexual assault.

5. This is just a dodge. “Bart O’Kavanaugh” almost certainly does refer to a fictionalized version of Kavanaugh. And it’s easy to see why he dodged because they were going to use tales from a book that are some blend of truth and story and try to hang him with it. As I said, deflections don’t interest me, especially when the hearing was going the way it was going. But it’s not a lie.

6. Kavanaugh used the word “refuted.” I assume that was intentional, since refute is a more slippery word than deny (though still strong), which you should note, is a word used only once by him in this context. This is the part of the statement that has everyone up in arms:

Importantly her friend, Ms. Keyser, has not only denied knowledge of the party, Ms. Keyser said under penalty of felony she does not know me, does not recall ever being at a party with me ever. And my two male friends who were allegedly there, who knew me well, have told this committee under penalty of felony that they do not recall any such party and that I never did or would do anything like this.

Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers. Refuted.

Merely sentences before, he explicitly says that she “denies knowledge of the party” and then makes the point that she says she “does not recall” ever being at a party with him. He then acknowledges his two friends also “deny knowledge” of the party. If his intent was to deceive then he did so badly by stating exactly what everyone is criticizing him for ignoring, when he said it mere sentences before! He is careful to accurately recount what they said, including denial vs. “I don’t remember” so I assume the choice of the word “refute” is likewise intentional. And in the context of “he said, she said” I don’t recall there ever being a party like that” is pretty %(*&ing strong. Which is why Ford went on to blame Keyser’s health issues. I suppose you could get more angry over this one, just because this was in his prepared statement and thus a strong word choice like that might rub you the wrong way.

7. This is really reaching. Ford had very few details, but there were a few. A general location, with a specific group of people. He denies a gathering at which it was just the four of them near the country club. Here he is denying a specific charge and now you are giving him grief. The word “like” is really important, and it does good work here.

8. This is related to the above. As his comments about “precision” make clear, he denies a party withthese particular circumstances. This line should be dropped entirely, Ford’s own team says that the July 1st date is not the one (although how someone with such memory problems could know, I’m not sure). Also, at that party was Garrett, whom she was apparently dating at the time. It’d be odd for this to be the party in question and Ford to forget him. They did interview him, by the way, and judging by the way the Democrats have reacted, he must have denied any knowledge of this assault as well.

+ Show Spoiler +

9. Context Context Context. The relevant exchange:

HIRONO: So the answer is yes. I am running out of time. You know, we only five minutes, so let me get to something else. In your Fox News interview, you said that you, quote, “always treated women with dignity and respect,” end quote, and that in high school you never, quote, “drank so much that you couldn’t remember what happened the night before.” Would you say the same thing about your college life?

KAVANAUGH: Yes.

HIRONO: So I’d like to read your statements from people who knew you in college. And as …

KAVANAUGH: Can I say one thing?

HIRONO: … Senator Coons noted …

KAVANAUGH: OK.

HIRONO: … that James Roche said, your roommate, “Although Brett was normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time. And he became aggressive and belligerent when he was drunk.” So is your former college roommate lying?

KAVANAUGH: I would refer you to what I said in the sealed or redacted portion about his relationship with the other two roommates, and I’m going to leave it at that. I will say – Senator, you were asking about college.

I got into Yale Law School. That’s the number one law school in the country. I had no connections there. I got there by busting my tail in college.

HIRONO: I feel insulted, as a Georgetown graduate.

(LAUGHTER)

KAVANAUGH: Excuse me?

HIRONO: But go on.

KAVANAUGH: I’m sorry. It’s ranked number one, that doesn’t mean it’s number one.

(LAUGHTER)

Yes, we know that his grandfather went to Yale as an undergrad. But what Brett is quite obviously saying here is that he didn’t have any connections to the law school and Hirono understands this when she mentions Georgetown. Even if his grandfather went to the law school (haven’t seen anything about that) Kavanaugh is speaking in tense about the 1980s. That right there would kill any bit of perjury, but I think that, especially if his grandfather didn’t attend the law school, then this statement was factual. It’s not even deflective or dodgy, it’s straight up true.

10. Finally, this one. This is actually the most iffy to, and when the lady was told what people thought it meant she seemed to think it was possible. I’m drawing my points on this item from this NYT story.
Notably , no one who actually used the phrase claims it had a sexual connotation, and all deny any sexual relationship, her included. The only people who claim it was sexual are A) Avanatti when he made that tweet (the other two parts of that tweet were blown up, as you know). B) classmates not directly involved. And it is certainly plausible. Kavanaugh indeed acknowledges that it looks bad and calls it “clumsy.”

One thing in particular we’re sad about: one of our good — one of our good female friends who we would admire and went to dances with had her names used on the yearbook page with the term “alumnus.” That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media’s interpreted the term is related to sex. It was not related to sex. As the woman herself noted to the media on the record, she and I never had any six — sexual interaction of — at all. I’m so sorry to her for that yearbook reference. This may sound a bit trivial, given all that we are here for, but one thing I want to try to make sure — sure of in the future is my friendship with her. She was and is a great person.

As for the little rhyme, that could be more innocent, this is from the story:



Nonetheless, she did sign the letter attesting to his character, before she saw the yearbook references. So at least in her mind those things aren’t related and that's just assholes 17 year old boys being themselves.
I think, given how the other two phrases that people thought were surely sexual (“FFFF” and “Devil’s Triangle”) turned out to be not sexual at all, I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Kavanaugh on this one.

***

As a reminder, despite what some people in this thread have been saying, before these allegations Kavanaugh was considered a mainstream, extremely well qualified potential nominee that any Republican president would have picked. He had the pedigree, the history, and the temperament. He was known for being intellectual and well-prepared, as well as being a decent human being. Add to that the fact that there still exists no allegation or story of any kind from his adult/professional life. Apparently he was this terrible person in college but even if that's true, he's not that man now, and there is no doubt about that.

In the end, I think David French at NR makes a succinct case.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/kavanaugh-case-for-confirmation-allegations-explained/


_____


Transcript quotes taken from:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript/?utm_term=.954e17bc5265

1: Lat is being EXTREMELY charitable. The fact he interprets "I was not involved in the handling of this nomination" as BK saying "I was not assigned this nomination officially as a WH duty" because he said earlier that "that was not one of the nominations I was assigned" is exactly the kind of shallow defense I expect from Lat at this point. If language is to mean anything, we have to believe he meant he was not involved in the handling of this nomination when he said "I was not involved in the handling of this nomination." OFC Lat has to argue this interpretation because if he really did mean what he said then the emails show he is blatantly lying.
2. This one is, admittedly, hard to show because we don't know how BK actually interpreted these emails. My opinion is someone as smart as him would be able to put 2 and 2 together when he sees the big "Confidential" watermark, the title "Spying" and reads the obviously not intended to be shared info in it, but sure he has plausible deniability.
3. Lat admits that he may have been technically wrong to say he had "no" involvement but tries to mitigate it by applying an irrelevant legal standard. Again, words matter. Regardless of what they were talking about earlier in the testimony, it is pretty clear what he means when he says "I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants." The quote provides its own context.
4: This one isn't so much impeachable as much as a legitimate concern about his character and honesty. Let's be clear about what happened. He was asked if there has even been the case where after a night of drinking he didn't remember part of the previous night. He responds literally by saying "It’s – you’re asking about, you know, blackout. I don’t know. Have you?" (a sign of a clear conscious /s). I assume you don't disagree with my initial point that it isn't credible to say he remembers everything he ever did while drunk. Therefore his moving of the goal posts from "not remember something" to "blackout" is telling. Even then I don't believe him about not blacking out based upon the weight of the circumstantial evidence, but that's just my opinion.
5. We are both making assumptions on this one. We'll never know the truth beyond a shadow of a doubt because neither BK nor MJ have any incentive to be truthful if it was him. At the very least BoK being BK is consistent with other information we know about his nickname and lifestyle in school (including the puking part).
6. Even without the questionable statement that they refute her story, at other points in the hearing he says "the witnesses who were there say it did not happen." He returns to this line, or some version of it, a number of times when being questioned by the Dems since it was one of his dodge-the-question talking points. It is unequivocally false, caveats or not.
7. Again this is my opinion but it simply isn't believable to say he has never been to a small gathering of friends where alcohol was present since that is literally what Ford describes. The fact he couldn't even admit to something as minor as this is also telling. Ofc we could actually find out the truth if the FBI was really testing the truthfulness of his statements and asked people who would know, but that wasn't the goal of the FBI investigation.
8. I don't get your defense of this one. I'm not saying that July 1 was THE party, but rather that his claim is false. He says "none of those gatherings included the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified. And as my calendars show." His own calendar contradicts this since the July 1 party was him hanging out with exactly the "people that Dr. Ford has identified."
9. This depends on what Yale Law considers a connection. Some school apps just ask if somebody went to the law school and some apps ask if a relative went any part of the university. Yale Law's app isn't open otherwise I'd check (tho ofc things could have been different in the 80s).
10. BK's lawyer originally said the Renate Alumnus was reference to a kiss he shared with her. That changed to "we were friends with her" after she said they have never kissed. We can't be sure with what we know whether he was lying about the kiss or simply miss-remembering.