A Judge Who Can’t Be Vetted Shouldn’t Be Confirmed

If Brett Kavanaugh’s extensive paper trail can’t be fully and publicly disclosed, the simplest solution is to nominate someone else.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/a-judge-who-cant-be-vetted-shouldnt-be-confirmed/569422/?utm_source=fbb

George Will, Having Left Republican Party, Urges Conservatives to Vote Against Donald Trump

http://fortune.com/2018/06/22/george-will-leaves-republican-party-donald-trump/

The FBI was reportedly given a list of 4 witnesses to begin its investigation into Brett Kavanaugh

Michelle Mark and Sonam Sheth

The New York Times reported that the FBI has been given a list of four witnesses to begin its investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
The witnesses are Mark Judge, Leland Keyser, PJ Smyth, and Deborah Ramirez.
The White House can order investigators to pursue new lines of inquiry based on what they learn from their interviews.
The FBI will be investigating aspects of three women's claims against Kavanaugh, but it reportedly does not plan to question one of the women, Julie Swetnick.
President Donald Trump disputed earlier reports that said the White House was setting restrictions on the FBI's investigation.

The FBI has been given a list of four witnesses to interview as part of a background check into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, The New York Times reported.

Those witnesses are Mark Judge, Leland Keyser, PJ Smyth, and Deborah Ramirez.

The investigation comes after Christine Blasey Ford, a northern California professor, alleged that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a high school gathering in the 1980s. Ford claims that Keyser and Smyth were present at the gathering when the alleged assault happened, and that Judge was eyewitness to it.

Ramirez, meanwhile, came forward with her own claim against Kavanaugh after Ford's story was published, accusing the Supreme Court nominee of exposing himself to her at a dorm-room party at Yale during the 1983-1984 school year.

The witness list does not include several of Kavanaugh's former classmates who have contradicted Kavanaugh's other claims about his drinking and partying habits in high school and college.

NBC News first reported on some of the limitations the White House has placed on the investigation, but President Donald Trump disputed the report after it was published.

"NBC News incorrectly reported (as usual) that I was limiting the FBI investigation of Judge Kavanaugh, and witnesses, only to certain people," Trump tweeted. "Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion. Please correct your reporting!"

NBC had reported that the FBI was barred from investigating claims by Julie Swetnick, the third woman who has come forward publicly with decades-old allegations against Kavanaugh. It also reported that the White House had provided a list of witnesses the FBI was allowed to interview.

The Times report said that while the FBI was not barred from investigating Swetnick's allegations, it does not plan on questioning her directly. But investigators are looking into aspects of all three women's claims.

The White House can order investigators to pursue other lines of inquiry and interviews if their interviews with people on the current list of witnesses lead them in that direction, and that may have been what Trump's tweet was referring to.

The White House counsel's office put together the witness list and is coordinating the scope of the FBI background check. The administration is said to be working closely with Senate Republicans on the matter, and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Maine Sen. Susan Collins — considered key swing votes — have both said they want Kavanaugh's friend, Mark Judge, questioned by the FBI.

Senate Republicans ultimately drafted the witness list and shared it with the White House, according to The Times, and they did not consult their Democratic colleagues when putting it together.

The FBI has already begun investigating accusations made by Ford and Ramirez, The Washington Post reported Saturday. Ford testified against Kavanaugh in an emotional hearing on Thursday.

Swetnick has alleged in a sworn declaration that Kavanaugh and Judge were present at a party in the early 1980s where she was gang raped. During his hearing to address the allegations on Thursday, Kavanaugh called Swetnick's claims a "farce," and Judge also disputed her claims.

Swetnick is represented by the attorney Michael Avenatti, who tweeted on Saturday that neither he nor his client had been contacted by the FBI, and that any restrictions on the investigation from the White House would "undermine the legitimacy" of the entire investigation.

"If true, this is outrageous," Avenatti tweeted. "Why are Trump and his cronies in the Senate trying to prevent the American people from learning the truth? Why do they insist on muzzling women with information submitted under penalty of perjury? Why Ramirez but not my client?"

President Donald Trump on Saturday told reporters that the FBI has "free rein" to do "whatever it is that they do" in the Kavanaugh investigation.

"Having them do a thorough investigation, I actually think it will be a blessing in disguise," Trump said. "It will be a good thing."

White House spokesman Raj Shah also told the Wall Street Journalthat the "scope and duration has been set by the Senate," and the White House was "letting the FBI agents do what they are trained to do."

The FBI investigation into Ford's and Ramirez's claims came after a dramatic showdown in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday, in which Flake urged his Republican colleagues to allow a one-week FBI investigation into the Kavanaugh allegations.

Though Flake and the majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to move Kavanaugh's nomination to a full Senate vote, he struck a deal with Democrats to delay the vote for a week while an FBI investigation goes ahead.

https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-kavanaugh-investigation-restrictions-julie-swatnick-2018-9

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Brett Kavanaugh’s perjury avalanche — 50 years in the making

The nomination process has been polluted by lies for decades, it’s time to scrub the process

https://www.salon.com/2018/09/08/brett-kavanaughs-perjury-avalanche-50-years-in-the-making/

GOP senator suggests Christine Blasey Ford may have 'false memories' of alleged assault

Daniel Bice, Milwaukee Journal SentinelPublished 2:33 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/29/ron-johnson-suggests-christine-blasey-ford-may-have-false-memories/1471571002/

Court Docs Allege Ex-Trump Staffer Drugged Woman He Got Pregnant With 'Abortion Pill' [UPDATED]

Katherine Krueger

The ongoing custody battle between former Trump campaign operatives Jason Miller and A.J. Delgado has taken another nasty turn: In an explosive new court filing, Delgado’s legal team alleges that Miller—prior to their own high-profile extramarital romance—carried out an affair with a woman he met at an Orlando strip club. Additionally, the court documents claim, when the woman found out she was pregnant, Miller surreptitiously dosed her with an abortion pill without her knowledge, leading, the woman claims, to the pregnancy’s termination and nearly her death.

With these allegations entered into the court record, Delgado is asking the court to order Miller—whom the filing says has “unsupervised time” with their child—to undergo a psychological evaluation. The filing says that she fears for her and the child’s safety.

According to the court documents—which were filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on Sept. 14 and obtained by Splinter—the alleged relationship started in 2012, when Miller was working for prominent Republican ad firm Jamestown Associates. The filing alleges that Miller, whose Twitter bio states that he now works as managing director at Teneo Strategy and as a political commentator on CNN, brought clients to Rachel’s Gentleman’s Club in Orlando, where he met a dancer identified only as Jane Doe.

Miller allegedly entered a sexual relationship with Doe, who Delgado says in the filing became pregnant. As the filing claims (emphasis theirs):

Shortly thereafter, according to Joe Doe, Mr. Miller visited her at her apartment with a Smoothie beverage.

Unbeknownst to Jane Doe, the Smoothie contained an abortion bill. [sic]

The pill induced an abortion, and Jane Doe wound up in a hospital emergency room, bleeding heavily and nearly went into a coma.

The unborn child died.

Jane Doe herself was hospitalized for two days, the abortion pill possibly reacting with potential street drugs in her system at the time she drank the Smoothie.

Upon leaving the hospital, a rightly enraged Jane Doe contacted the staffers of local politicians with whom Mr. Miller had been in attendance at Rachel’s the night they met.

Mr. Miller then, in a panic, attempted to have Jane Doe sign a non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”), presumably in exchange for a sum of money.

Delgado confirmed the document’s authenticity to Splinter but declined to comment further. “I’m concerned for my safety (more importantly, my son’s) with Miller and afraid of his reaction if I add comment,” she said.

In a statement to Splinter after this story was published, Miller’s legal team strongly disputed the claims made in the filing, saying: “To be clear, there is no validity to the false accusations made in Ms. Delgado’s filing.”

“We also know the identity of the ‘Jane Doe’ referenced in the filing, have located her, and Mr. Miller is absolutely certain that he does not know her, never had a relationship with her, and never engaged in the actions Ms. Delgado—and now you—falsely accuse him of committing,” Miller’s lawyers also said.

Delgado revealed in an August 2017 profile in The Atlantic that she and Miller, who was at the time and is currently married, conceived a son during a relationship that began in October 2016, when both were staffers on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At the time, she said, Miller had said he was separated from his wife. When she found out she was pregnant, she claims Miller told her his wife was also pregnant, which she told the magazine was “a very rough thing to hear.” She said in the profile that Miller asked her on two occasions if “there was any chance I’d terminate the pregnancy,” a charge Miller denied.

Shortly after the 2016 election, Trump named Miller as his White House communications director. But just two days later—after Delgado tweeted about the news, referencing Miller as “the baby-daddy”—Miller announced he would no longer be taking the job in order to focus on his family. Miller eventually gave a story to Page Six about a month after their son, William, was born, welcoming him to the family along with his wife and their two daughters.

The acrimony between the two appears to only have grown since then. As Delgado details in the court filing, she claims to have sought out a person—identified in the filing as “Gentleman A”—who tweeted cryptic messages at Miller referencing the Orlando strip club by name and saying they want his “unethical immoral deals” to “come to light.” According to the documents, this person provided Delgado with Jane Doe’s real name, and Delgado found the woman on Facebook.

The court filing also details Delgado’s interactions with “Journalist A,” whom the filing characterizes as “one of the nation’s most respected and pre-eminent journalists, who has broken many national stories” and whose “work is closely followed and supported by millions, including countless A-list celebrities.” Delgado relayed the allegations about Miller and Jane Doe to the journalist, who spoke with Jane Doe to confirm details about the story.

When the journalist asked about the account, the filing says, “Jane Doe’s instant reaction was: ‘Yes, that happened to me—how did you know? Who told you?”

The filing also says Journalist A traveled to Florida multiple times to report out the story, including traveling to Clearwater, FL, where Delgado says the journalist told her they were to speak to “yet another victim of Mr. Miller’s” who alleged he had been physically abusive. The journalist, the documents claim, is still working on their story for an undisclosed outlet.

In its statement to Splinter, Miller’s legal team said:

We know the identity of the journalist Ms. Delgado spoke to, and that journalist rightly refused to publish a story about these false accusations and confirmed to Mr. Miller that these defamatory accusations could not be verified.

UPDATE, Sept. 21, 10:12 p.m. ET: This post has been updated to include comment from Miller’s attorneys.

UPDATE, Sept. 22, 1:22 p.m. ET: In a Twitter thread on Saturday, Miller saidthere is “no validity to the false accusations made” in the court filing. He also claimed Delgado’s accusations “have already been disproven by at least one reporter.”

Shortly after, Yashar Ali, a journalist who works with outlets like New York magazine and HuffPost, tweeted that he is the journalist referenced in Miller’s thread and said “I have not disproven such claims.”

UPDATE, Sept. 22, 7:51 p.m. ET: Miller tweeted that he has “decided to step away” from his role as a political commentator for CNN to “focus on clearing my name” in the wake of the allegations.

https://splinternews.com/court-docs-allege-ex-trump-staffer-drugged-woman-he-got-1829233105

Calls to postpone Kavanaugh vote grow: Yale Law School, American Bar Association seek FBI probe

Alan Dershowitz wrote on Fox News that Republicans must investigate Kavanaugh before confirming him to Supreme Court

https://www.salon.com/2018/09/28/calls-to-postpone-kavanaugh-vote-grow-yale-law-school-american-bar-association-seek-fbi-probe/

'We fell in love … he wrote me beautiful letters': Trump boasts about improved relationship with Kim Jong Un during West Virginia rally

President Donald Trump lauded his recently improved relationship with North Korea's Kim Jong Un on Saturday during a West Virginia rally.
Trump said he and Kim "fell in love" after Kim wrote him "beautiful letters."
North Korea's foreign minister also spoke publicly on Saturday in New York City, expressing frustration to the United Nations General Assembly with the slow pace of negotiations with the US.

President Donald Trump said during a rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Saturday that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un "fell in love" in recent months, paving the way toward what Trump called a "great relationship."

At a rally meant to shore up support for GOP candidates in the midterm elections, Trump touted the de-escalation in tensions between the US in North Korea and noted that only recently were Trump and Kim trading insults and threatening one another.

"I was really being tough and so was he. And we were going back and forth, and then we fell in love. Okay? No really. He wrote me beautiful letters," Trump said. "They're great letters. We fell in love."

Trump was likely referring to the symbolic letters sent personally to Trump from Kim over the summer that were heavy on flattery. Trump added that the media was likely to criticize his glowing praise for Kim.

"Now they'll say, 'Donald Trump said they fell in love. How horrible is that? So unpresidential.' And I always tell you, it's so easy to be presidential," Trump said. "But instead of having 10,000 people outside trying to get into this packed arena, we'd have about 200 people standing there. It's so easy to be presidential."

In contrast to Trump's remarks, North Korea's foreign minister spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Saturday, expressing some frustration with the lack of progress in negotiations with the US.

According to the Associated Press, Ri Yong Ho criticized the Trump administration for ramping up pressure and sanctions on North Korea to dismantle its main nuclear arsenal, noting that the US hasn't given "any corresponding response."

"The perception that sanctions can bring us on our knees is a pipe dream of the people who are ignorant of us," Ri said. "Without any trust in the US, there will be no confidence in our national security … and under such circumstances there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first."

https://amp.businessinsider.com/trump-kim-jong-un-fell-in-love-remarks-west-virginia-rally-2018-9

Middleboro Review

Sunday, September 30, 2018

FOCUS: Juan Cole | 55% of GOP Say Sexual Assault Not Disqualifying for SCOTUS; What Is Wrong With Them?

White House Moves to Constrain FBI Kavanaugh Probe

The FBI was reportedly given a list of 4 witnesses to begin its investigation into Brett Kavanaugh AND SO ON......