The Democrats can’t do anything about stopping Brett Kavanaugh from getting on the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s how to get him off again.

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at his own con-
formation hearing, September 5, 2018. Will he tell a U.S.
Senate subcommittee lies that could later get him impeached?

I’ve been intermittently watching the Senate Confirmation hearings about Brett Kavanaugh today. And I am disappointed with my fellow Dems.

Most of their questioning as of this writing has to do with getting him to tip his hand on how he will rule on currently constitutional issues, from matters pertaining to abortion to matters pertaining to whether the President of the United States can be subpoenaed and whether he can pardon himself.

Those are questions Kavanaugh can easily duck and weave his way through. I think the Democratic senators are missing an opportunity. Hear me out:

Since Republicans control the votes, nothing the Democrats ask will keep him off the court bench. However, one day, the tables will turn. There will be a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. Democrats ought to be looking toward that day with an eye to impeachment and removal. And this is where Republican refusal to release documents can play into the hands of those who feel Kavanaugh is a threat to the Constitution.

The Republicans are keeping documents away from the full committee for a reason. If they simply contained weather reports and the lyrics to Christmas carols, the Republicans would surely release them. But somewhere, at some time during his White House tenure. Kavanaugh did something, or maybe many things that he doesn’t want to admit to today. And that’s why tens of thousands of documents are being withheld. 

If the Republicans refuse to release the documents, we are entitled to speculate as to what might be in them.

Maybe Kavanaugh encouraged torture.

Maybe he said something like, “To hell with habeas corpus and the Constitution. Nobody will second guess us anyway.”

Maybe he admitted that the then Republican-leaning Supreme Court had stolen the election from Gore and given it to Bush, and wasn’t that a laugh.

Maybe he was the one, or part of a team, that “infiltrated the Democrats’ confidential internal files about which of President George W. Bush’s nominees to try to block and with what tactics.”

Maybe he lied in these matters:

At his appeals court confirmation hearing in 2006, Judge Kavanaugh — who had worked as an associate White House counsel in the Bush administration — told senators that he did not know anything about the infiltration of Senate Democrats’ files on judicial nomination fights or about the warrantless wiretapping program before they eventually became public. 

But Mr. Leahy indicated that documents marked “committee confidential” show that Manuel Miranda, then a Republican staffer on the Judiciary Committee, had sent Judge Kavanaugh emails about Mr. Leahy’s private concerns about a judicial nominee whose hearing was coming up and a draft letter Mr. Leahy had not yet sent. He also suggested that the files may show that Mr. Miranda made a reference to having a mole on the committee or spying on Democrats, and that Mr. Miranda may have suggested meeting outside of their workplaces. The senator also indicated that Mr. Kavanaugh may have had some involvement with a memo written by John Yoo, who was an attorney in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who wrote opinions secretly blessing the surveillance program as lawful.

Just get it all down, in sworn testimony. Kavanaugh will get appointed, no matter what the Democrats do, say, or ask at the hearing. But when the Democrats are in power again, the entire body of withhold evidence can be subpoenaed. 

And if  any of my speculations turn out to be correct, and Kavanaugh lied to the Senators at these hearings, he can then be impeached and removed from the Supreme Court, and thereafter prosecuted for perjury.

The remaining constitutional question may then become whether any decisions Kavanaugh signed on to after getting his seat under false pretenses can still be considered a valid decision. After all, if the New York Crank put on a Kavanaugh mask and decided a case, any decision based on my vote would certainly be disqualified. I don’t see why that same theory shouldn’t apply to a judge appointed under false pretenses.

So the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee should stop asking hypotheticals about legal decisions and start asking purely factual questions:

• Did you ever endorse or help to defend the practice of torture of prisoners of war captured by the United States?

• Did you ever seek to deprive prisoners taken in Afghanistan or Iraq of habeas corpus?

• Did you ever endorse, or help to defend, or know about secret programs to surveil American citizens without a court warrant?

• Did you ever have knowledge of any illegal act that you failed to report to the Attorney General of the United States?

•Did you ever see, touch, or know of property of Senator Patrick Leahy, including but not limited to papers, recordings, and strategy documents stolen from the office or campaign of any U.S. Senator?

• Did you report that theft to the legal authorities as required by law?

These questions are answerable by a single yes, or no. They do not force Kavanaugh to speculate on future decisions. They simply ask him to tell the truth about past events. 

Let him lie his head off.

And then, when the time comes, knock him off the bench with his own sworn testimony and toss him into the slammer.

Get to it, Democrats.