On August 6th, Jerry Nadler's committee wrote The National Archives and Records Administration asking them to produce ALL the White House records from 2001 to 2006 when Kavanaugh served as Staff Secretary and in the White House Counsel’s Office. (Link to letter)
Predictably Sean Hannity freaks out and screams "LET... IT... GO."
LET... IT... GO. https://t.co/Mss0iiHHFB— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) August 7, 2019
(Hmm, I wonder if he just watched Frozen?)
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, called it harassment and a fishing expedition. I'm surprised he didn't call it a witch hunt, I expect that will be coming from Trump.
The people who don't want evidence to be produced will work to delay release and attempt to block it claiming it was privileged or not relevant. When the new info is released--corroborating other evidence--they will work to reinterpret the smoking gun emails and Kavanaugh's awareness of them as minor.
Here are more emails. It is simply not ‘normal’ to get real-time insider intelligence from a Democratic “mole” and marked “spying.” Red flags abound. And with 102,000 documents withheld by the Trump WH, mostly about judicial noms, we can bet there’s more. pic.twitter.com/FtbJsahkD7
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) September 6, 2018
I'm not going to go into all the various gambits the right will use to delay the release of records legally, but I expect some new BS legal gambit to be used which will take till 2020 to be ruled disingenuously stupid.
What I want to point out is that concurrently the right is working to solidify the "Kavanaugh is the real victim and Ford is a liar" narrative. This is designed for their usual audience. We see stories in the Washington Examiner like "Top House Republican: Nadler investigation into Kavanaugh 'harassment.
To bolster the "Ford is a liar." narrative they had the co-author of the new book Justice On Trial go on "Tight Shot" with Howard "No longer credible" Kurtz to repeat negative stories about Ford while chastising the "liberal media" for their bias against Kavanaugh.
Note the claims repeated with no named sources.
I used to spend a lot of time listening to and reading right wing media. Most people reading this blog don't. (Probably to protect their mental health) But the narratives created for Fox News audiences also influence narratives from sources that we read, listen to, watch and find credible.
The "deny, delay, lie and attack" method is done to wear down our people doing the work to fight the right and to discourage the general public from hoping for success.
Trump successfully got out of being interviewed by Mueller's office. His delay game worked. The people whose testimony he couldn't block at the time, he is blocking now because they understand that the video testimony now is different than a written report. However, this method did NOT protect several people from GOING TO JAIL. Those jail sentences are markers of our successes. Let's not forget them.
The Nadler request that could lead to Kavanaugh's impeachment is part of the official process, so it will get the official huge push back. It's to be expected. Hannity is expected to freak out. I expect us to keep going, to persist. Keep talking about what is possible. Fight for it.
I wrote a long piece about other steps to impeach Kavanaugh last week, knowing that it was an unconventional path to get more evidence of his lying. Part of my reason was to encourage the overall narrative Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be impeached.
The narrative from NPR and mainstream news is, "Even if you democrats do get what you want, you will still lose. The Senate will never convict."
The media will always talk to experts and politicians about how hard it will be to impeach, either Trump or Kavanaugh.
But you know what else was hard? Going to the moon. Getting a lying, lawbreaking President out of office. We did both. We can do hard things.
I don't care what Sean's going to say, bring impeachment on. I never listen to him anyway.
