Senate Judiciary Chair Grassley: Dianne Feinstein's office refuses to cooperate on Kavanaugh accuser procedure

Here's yet more proof that the Democrats are playing dirty with Kavanaugh.

Senate Republicans want to follow up with Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in the regular order of the Senate confirmation process. What's supposed to happen is that an update to a nominee's background will be discussed in private phone calls between each party and the committee. If necessary, additional testimony may be required, but the phone calls should come before the committee reaches that point.

But a statement from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says that Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office is refusing to cooperate in the follow-up on Ford's accusations.

Here's the statement:

Anyone who comes forward as Dr. Ford has deserves to be heard, so I will continue working on a way to hear her out in an appropriate, precedented and respectful manner.

The standard procedure for updates to any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties. In this case, that would entail phone calls with at least Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. Consistent with that practice, I asked Senator Feinstein’s office yesterday to join me in scheduling these follow-ups. Thus far, they have refused. But as a necessary step in evaluating these claims, I’ll continue working to set them up.

Unfortunately, committee Republicans have only known this person's identity from news reports for less than 24 hours and known about her allegations for less than a week. Senator Feinstein, on the other hand, has had this information for many weeks and deprived her colleagues of the information necessary to do our jobs. The Minority withheld even the anonymous allegations for six weeks, only to later decide that they were serious enough to investigate on the eve of the committee vote, after the vetting process had been completed.

It’s deeply disturbing that the existence of these allegations were leaked in a way that seemed to preclude Dr. Ford’s confidentiality.

Over my nearly four decades in the Senate I have worked diligently to protect whistleblowers and get to the bottom of any issue. Dr. Ford’s attorney could have approached my office, while keeping her client confidential and anonymous, so that these allegations could be thoroughly investigated. Nevertheless, we are working diligently to get to the bottom of these claims. (Emphasis added.)

So let's recap how Feinstein has played this. In July, Feinstein's office received a confidential letter from Ford detailing her accusations. Feinstein sat on this letter for two months, failing to bring it to the public or the full committee's attention throughout Kavanaugh's public testimony. Then, the week before the committee was set to vote to advance Kavanaugh to the full Senate for confirmation, Feinstein announced she has referred the letter to the FBI for a criminal investigation against Kavanaugh. She did not announce what the accusations against him are or who is making them. The American people had to wait for that information to be leaked to the media before Kavanaugh's accuser, Ford, came forward with her allegations for the first time in 36 years.

Senate Republicans are obviously disturbed, so they want to give Ford a chance to submit her accusations to the Senate to get to the truth of the matter. If there is credible evidence that Kavanaugh committed a crime, the American people deserve to know and Ford deserves justice. But Feinstein's office is slow-walking that process, because she's not actually interested in the truth. This isn't about what happened in the 1980s when Kavanaugh and Ford were in high school. This isn't about Kavanaugh's character or his fitness for the Supreme Court. This isn't about truth or justice or good government.

This is Dianne Feinstein and the Senate Democrats using any means necessary — even destroying a man's reputation —  to politicize the Supreme Court nomination process and prevent a constitutional textualist from sitting on the court.

It's unethical. It's disgusting. It's the Democratic Party.

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