Kavanaugh Confirmation Hillary Clinton laughs at Kavanaugh’s claim of ‘revenge’ Hillary Clinton on Tuesday balked at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's claim that the allegations of sexual misconduct against him are being carried out as part of "revenge on behalf of the Clintons," saying such a declaration "deserves a lot of laughter." During a nine-hour hearing last week that gripped the country, Kavanaugh testified that Christine Blasey Ford's allegation was a "calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election." He also referenced his work on the Starr Report, which helped pave the way for President Bill Clinton's impeachment, and said he was the victim of revenge for the Clintons. When asked about the statement at The Atlantic Festival on Tuesday, Clinton laughed. "I thought it was part of the whole of his very defensive and unconvincing presentation," Clinton said. "I told someone later, 'Boy, I tell you, they give us a lot of credit — 36 years ago we started this against Kavanaugh.'" POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The former secretary of State added that if Kavanaugh is expected to approach cases and defendants with fairness, "there's lots to be concerned about." By contrast, Clinton exalted Ford, the California professor and psychologist who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were both in high school. Since her testimony Thursday, Republicans have questioned Ford's credibility for not bringing up the decades-old allegations until now and being unable to remember specific details, such as the date the alleged incident took place. Since Ford's allegations became public, two other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, have accused Kavanaugh of separate sexual misconduct incidents during his high school and college years. Ford testified that she and her family had been under excessive public scrutiny and had received death threats, causing them to relocate. "You have to ask yourself, why would anybody put themselves through this if they did not believe that they had important information to convey to the Senate?" Clinton asked. "She said it was her civic duty." Clinton also praised the two women who confronted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on Friday with their own stories of sexual assault as he was on his way to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which he demanded an FBI probe into the allegations. Flake said the women influenced his thinking on Kavanaugh's nomination. Recalling the 1991 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual misconduct by professor Anita Hill, Clinton said Kavanaugh had been even more defiant. "The performance, the behavior was quite out of bounds. I don't ever remember anything like that," Clinton said, while also blasting a double standard can judge women as too emotional for public office and leadership positions. Democrats and Republicans alike have called into question Kavanaugh’s temperament during the hearing as potentially too strident. During a notable exchange, Kavanaugh turned back a question about excessive drinking to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who had just shared her experience with alcoholism in her own family. On Tuesday, Flake recalled thinking to himself “we can’t have this on the court” as he watched Kavanaugh’s testimony and interactions with senators, though he later clarified he was not referencing the judge himself. Undecided senators, such as Flake, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), are expected to decide how they will vote this week as the FBI interviews key witnesses, including Ramirez and others both Ford and Kavanaugh have named. The debate over whom to believe in the absence of definitively incriminating or exculpatory evidence has dominated the national conversation, with some arguing that allegations of sexual assault are now seen as vehicles for denying due process to the accused. President Donald Trump was the latest Republican to articulate such a stance, saying on Tuesday, "It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of." But on Tuesday, Clinton denied that the debate pitted men against women. "I don't see it so much as some kind of conflict as finally righting the balance, because there's been a tremendous imbalance on women's lives, women's narratives — they've been historically dismissed, condescended to," Clinton said.<doc-sep>Kavanaugh’s demeanor and language during his testimony were widely criticized by Democrats as unbefitting of a potential Supreme Court justice—and considered potentially disqualifying on their own. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday at The Atlantic Festival that Kavanaugh’s remarks revealed a political bias against the left, and that “he should recuse himself from many cases that will come before the Court.” I know Brett Kavanaugh, but I wouldn’t confirm him. Even the Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, who helped initiate an FBI investigation into the allegations last week, called the judge’s interactions with lawmakers “sharp and partisan.” “We can’t have that on the Court,” he said at the festival Tuesday, without elaborating further. Clinton, in her first public comments on Kavanaugh’s testimony, joined the ranks of those critics. “For anyone who believes there’s such a thing as judicial temperament and that we want judges, particularly those on our highest court, to approach issues, approach plaintiffs and defendants with a sense of fairness … there’s a lot to be concerned about,” Clinton said. “There is such a thing that you seek in judges of a judicious temperament … people who are able to discipline themselves, to be open to the evidence wherever it might lead … This was quite unusual, what we saw the other day.” Kavanaugh’s claims echoed Clinton’s own comments from 1998 that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to bring down her husband’s administration. Coincidentally, Kavanaugh was part of the independent counsel Ken Starr’s team investigating Bill Clinton at the time she said that. Kavanaugh’s implication, that Clinton may have been involved in a plot to thwart his confirmation, appeared to amuse her. “Boy, I tell you, they give us [Clintons] a lot of credit,” she told Goldberg with a chuckle. “It would’ve had to have happened starting 36 years ago, and that seems a stretch even for the vast right-wing conspiracy stories about me.”<doc-sep>NBC morning news show host Megyn Kelly described the Senate hearings in which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford brought her sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a “farce.” The former litigator said the hours-long process wasn’t about getting to the truth. It lacked the checks and balances of true judicial process. “The whole thing was a farce. It was set up to be a farce,” Kelly said during a panel session today at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit. “There was no impartial arbiter in that Senate hearing room.” Kelly said the proceeding wasn’t about getting to the truth, but rather deciding whether to confirm Kavanaugh to a lifetime Supreme Court appointment. The judge was denied due process and Ford was unlikely to be believed by most Republicans, Kelly said. “It’s going to be utterly unsatisfactory,” Kelly said. Earlier this week, Kelly fired off a series of tweets in which she challenged the credibility of Julie Swetnick, the third woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. The attack prompted backlash online from some who accused Kelly of victim-shaming. “The notion that *every* woman must be believed is absurd,” Kelly wrote in a series of tweets Monday night. “Just ask the 3 Duke lax players who were falsely accused of rape by a woman who virtually all of the media believed but who made the whole thing up.” Kelly, a former corporate litigator, has been chipping away at Swetnick on the air, and on social media. The Hill reported she devoted a large portion of Megyn Kelly Today to the woman who claims she witnessed Kavanaugh in high school attempting to get teenage girls “inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped. '” During a discussion, Kelly cited an OregonLive.com report that Swetnick was accused of lying about her education and work experience at a Portland tech company. Online, she surfaced an Associated Press report of a personal injury complaint she filed against the Washington Area Transit Authority, in which she claimed she lost modeling work to an employer who turned out to be a friend. Also this, from ⁦@AP⁩, on Swetnick: she once sued MD transit claiming her broken nose cost her modeling jobs; the “employer” she cited said he was actually just a friend,1st met her in a bar a yr *after* her injury, never owned the co she listed, nor agreed to pay her b/4. pic.twitter.com/lgHno5PoqC — Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 1, 2018<doc-sep>The Senate voted Saturday to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, following a contentious confirmation battle. The vote total was 50-48. The vote took place as protesters against the nomination interrupted the vote and as those for and against Kavanaugh marched on the Capitol grounds and at the Supreme Court. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the only Democrat to vote for the nominee. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican who opposed the nomination.<doc-sep>
Hillary Clinton addressed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's alleged sexual misconduct Tuesday at the Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C., saying she found his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, very credible. "You have to ask yourself, Why would anybody put themselves through this if they did not believe that they had important information to convey to the Senate?" the former secretary of state said. "She basically said that she thought it was her civic duty. I found her willingness to say 'I don't remember that, but I remember this' to be very convincing. And I felt a great swell of pride that she would be willing to put herself out there under these circumstances." At a Senate hearing investigating claims of Kavanaugh's sexual assault Thursday, the judge blamed the Clinton family for his situation. During his emotional opening remarks, he called the hearing a "calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups." Hillary laughed at the idea that anyone was seeking revenge on behalf of her and her family. "I mean, really, yes, it deserves a lot of laughter," she said. Clinton said she wasn't watching when Kavanaugh made the comments about her family, but that she heard about it later. "Look, I thought it was just part of his very defensive and unconvincing presentation. And I told someone later, 'Boy, I tell you, they give us a lot of credit,'" she told a crowd to more laughter. "Thirty-six years ago, we started this against him, in high school apparently," she joked. Kavanaugh worked closely with Ken Starr, special counsel on the Whitewater Investigation which exposed President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky and eventually led to the former president's impeachment trial. "I want the FBI to conduct as through an investigation as they possibly can within whatever restraints are imposed upon them," she continued. "But I think for anyone who believes there is such a thing as a judicial temperament and that we want judges, particularly those on our highest court, to approach issues and plaintiffs and defendants with a sense of fairness, that there's a lot to be concerned about." Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy called Kavanaugh's accusations "conspiratorial madness," and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said, "This 'lock her up' grace note in Judge Kavanaugh's remarks may have raised a cheer in the White House, but it was a sad moment in the history of this committee." CNN reported that President Donald Trump approved of Kavanaugh's Clinton comment. Kavanaugh has been accused by three women, Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, of committing sexual misconduct while he was in high school or college. Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, testified to Senate Thursday morning. The Palo Alto University professor told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she most clearly remembered Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge's laughter on the night of her alleged assault in 1982. "The uproarious laughter between the two" was still vivid in her mind, she said. "And their having fun at my expense. I was underneath one of them as they laughed, two friends having a really good time with one another." After much debate, the Senate called for a one-week FBI investigation Friday afternoon before a formal vote for Kavanaugh's Supreme Court appointment is conducted.