Senator Merkley Is Suing to Halt the Lawless Kavanaugh Confirmation Process
Citing Trump administration secrecy, he asks a federal judge to issue an injunction to prevent this mangled process from continuing.
He now has the American Bar Association behind him.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley are desperately determined to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the conservative judicial activist who will tip the balance of the US Supreme Court in favor of their partisan political program and the economic- and social-policy agendas of their campaign contributors.
The Republican leaders of the Senate propose to “plow right through” a biased final hearing and hastily-scheduled votes to confirm Kavanaugh.
Merkley’s lawsuit points to “Three Acts of Direct Interference” by the president and Senate Republicans, arguing that
1. The Defendants conspired to conceal from the Senate and public all of the documents from Kavanaugh’s three most formative professional years, as Staff Secretary in the George W. Bush White House.
2. The Defendants conspired to conceal 100,000 documents from Kavanaugh’s time of service as a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush. The Defendants empowered Mr. William Burck, a partisan lawyer with profound conflicts of interest, to utilize executive privilege on behalf of President Trump to block Senate access to the relevant documents.
3. The Defendants conspired to further limit access to documents by utilizing the services of William Burck to label 141,000 pages “Committee Confidential,” limiting the ability of Senators to speak about them and to communicate with experts and members of the public about the contents.
This lawsuit is about more than the concerns of one senator, however. It exposes and challenges the charade that is unfolding since Trump nominated Kavanaugh—and the threat that wrongdoing by the president and his Senate allies poses to the system of checks and balances.
As Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, says: “We are witnessing a U.S. Supreme Court nomination process that, from its onset, is an executive branch power grab giving the President unchecked authority over choosing this important lifetime appointment without a vigorous review of the nominee’s records. At every turn, this process has been one shrouded in secrecy and is discordant with the process as laid out in the Constitution.”
Clarke, whose group has launched a “Release the Records” campaign, is making an argument that goes beyond ideology and partisanship.
“Americans deserve a Justice whose lifetime appointment is not tainted by political gamesmanship and whose appointment comes after full release and examination of his records,” argues Clark. “[Chairman Grassley’s] torturous logic in continuing the nomination process without the full record of the nominee is an affront to our constitution. We must protect and defend the ‘Advice and Consent’ role of the Senate, an essential and necessary check on Presidential power. Through obstruction, and concealment of tens of thousands of relevant records, the President and Senate leadership are preventing Senator Merkley and his Senate colleagues from exercising their constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on the fitness of the nominee.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/s...t-the-lawless-kavanaugh-confirmation-process/
If this accusation COULD HAVE been investigated as a demonstrable crime either in civil court or criminal court.....why did the left sit on her story for over 6 six week instead of simply demanding an FBI investigation as early as the 1st of Aug. 2018? A good place to begin this (wink, wink) investigation would be the sworn statements of the 4 individuals who were named as witnesses to the event......individuals that refuted the charge that this event ever took place (one them, the BEST FRIEND of the accuser)....all under the penalty of a felony. Let's see which one of these (wink, wink) witnesses the FBI indicts as perjurers first. Hold your breath.....wait for it.....wait for it.....
