OPINION:
Judge Brett Kavanaugh is the most qualified U.S. Supreme Court nominee in televised times. His hearing answers set a new standard for guarding judicial independence.
Judge Kavanaugh asserted that regard for Supreme Court “precedent” is not just a judicial policy, as previous nominees have done, but that it is found in the U.S. Constitution’s definition of judicial power. Wow.
What is not new, or unexpected, is the 11th-hour attack on Judge Kavanaugh’s character by Democrats who have weaponized Christine Blasey Ford’s uncorroborated allegation of a sexual assault. I can authoritatively say that this is a tactic from Senate Democrats’ well-worn playbook, because, as Democrat senators have repeatedly told us at Judge Kavanaugh’s hearings, I am the guy who read their playbook.
We need to be sensitive to women, but like many Americans I am hardwired to believe that the charge against Judge Kavanaugh is an orchestrated lie. One that began to take shape the day Judge Kavanaugh was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit and became a U.S. Supreme Court hopeful.
I would go further. It represents a criminal conspiracy to defraud that should be referred to the Justice Department for a full criminal investigation. To do otherwise is to allow a new form of McCarthyism, where you can be accused of being a communist for only a long-ago afternoon.
Ironically, a recently published 2002 email sent by me as senior nominations counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee to my counterpart at the White House, Brett Kavanaugh, warned him that Democrats were likely to use an 11th-hour secret letter to smear Judge Priscilla Owen as they had done to smear Judge Charles Pickering, both George W. Bush appellate court nominees. I had read their playbook.
The post-hearing attack against Judge Kavanaugh is not the only lie. It was heralded by lies. I have not been a public figure since May 2010, when columnist Dana Milbank highlighted my support for President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan. But senators still punched down at me during the Kavanaugh hearings so as to tenderize Judge Kavanaugh’s credibility and lay a foundation for an endgame that they knew full well.
Democrats revived their 14-year-old harangue that I had “hacked,” “stolen” and unethically read their strategy memos. In 2004, these charges were used as a smokescreen to distract from the evidence of corruption that we discovered on our desktops, i.e. memos that exposed collusion with special interest groups to suborn our Constitution.
In 2018, the harangue has been used to suggest that Brett Kavanaugh was in on the great “stolen” memo caper, and to prepare the way for the allegation to come.
Democrats’ questions to insinuate that Brett Kavanaugh received “hacked,” “stolen,” and unethically obtained “private” and “confidential” documents are not only based on provable lies, they are proof that they lie.
I volunteered a statement to the Judiciary Committee, under penalty of law, that Judge Kavanaugh did not know the source of our “intel.” But Judge Kavanaugh can also safely say that he had no knowledge of “stolen,” “ill-gotten” documents because nothing was “stolen” or “ill-gotten.”
In 2002, I was made aware of a glitch in the Judiciary Committee’s “shared server” that allowed us to read documents saved by some staff of Democratic senators. Later, a Senate report confirmed that we had “open permission.” On the first day, I was shown memos that evidenced corruption. I opened the ethics manual and read the Code of Ethics for Government Service: “[a]ny person in Government service should … (9) expose corruption wherever discovered.” We continued to read. My problem became that while congressional staffers have a whistleblower duty, Congress has conveniently exempted itself from whistleblower protection laws.
How do we know Democratic senators are lying? In 2004, a specious complaint was filed against me with the New York Bar, echoing Democratic senators’ charges, the bar promptly disregarded it; presumably for the reasons I gave them. And when Democrats referred their charges of “stolen” and “confidential” documents to a U.S. Attorney, I published a law review article and, in other provocative ways, made sure the Democratic-holdover prosecutor knew my thoughts on the law. He never even interviewed me; presumably for the reasons I gave him.
So when, in 2006, an FBI agent sat in my home to vet me for a full security clearance, needed for a diplomatic post in Iraq, I told him to call the U.S. Attorney and ask him if I had committed any crime. A few weeks later I made my first corkscrew landing into a war zone, proud to join the greatest national sacrifice of my generation, and far removed from the lies of little senators.
The 11th-hour smear against Brett Kavanaugh is a tactic like others previously deployed. Just read their playbook — their 2004 memos available online that Democrats strained so hard to
encircle with a bodyguard of lies. You will see there what they are capable of doing, corruptly.
• Manuel A. Miranda served as nominations counsel to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
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