Quote:Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the most powerful conservatives in the House, has been accused by at least five men of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of possibly more than 1,000 athletes and students, when he was the assistant coach of the wrestling team at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994. Jordan’s response: deny the allegations and raise questions about his accusers’ intents.

“Look, the timing makes you wonder,” Jordan told CNN at a July 4 event. “All I know is, it’s not true. ... It’s interesting that the timing is what it is, in light of things that are going on in Washington.”
Jordan doubled down in his denials Friday, attacking one of the former wrestlers for having a “vendetta against Ohio State” and a “vendetta against [Jordan’s] family.” The Freedom Caucus founder has found support among conservatives. Fellow Republican lawmakers, like Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows, have said the accusations are false.

Even President Donald Trump chimed in, saying he doesn’t believe the former wrestlers. “I don’t believe them at all. I believe him. Jim Jordan is one of the most outstanding people I’ve met since I’ve been in Washington,” Trump said. “I believe him 100 percent. No question in my mind. I believe Jim Jordan 100 percent. He’s an outstanding man.” The conservative outlet the Daily Caller published an article questioning the credibility of the wrestlers cited in an NBC report, reporting on their “sketchy history.” Conservatives like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and House Freedom Caucus spokesperson Darin Miller, who used to work in Jordan’s office, shared the article on Twitter..

Quote:Since he became the Republican presidential nominee in 2016, Mr. Trump has defended several men accused of sexual misconduct, including himself. Even before becoming a politician, Mr. Trump weighed in on allegations against well-known men, though he did not always side with the accused. Here is a history of the president’s responses to sexual misconduct and abuse allegations.

Quote:Larry Klayman, a vocal supporter of President Trump who founded the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, is urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate former Fox News president and current White House communications official Bill Shine. Klayman, who also founded the organization Freedom Watch, wrote in a letter Thursday that Shine, who joined the White House last month as deputy chief of staff for communications, should be investigated for his reported role in covering up allegations of sexual misconduct at Fox News. “As a strong supporter of President Trump, I am deeply disturbed that Mr. Shine, who has had a questionable past and background, is now serving in an influential position in our government,” Klayman wrote in his letter to U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman and assistant U.S. attorneys Damian Williams and Andrea Griswold.

Quote:This is far from the first time the Trump has unequivocally dismissed credible accusations of sexual misconduct made against him or one of his political allies, opting to smear the people speaking out about alleged abuse as liars. Trump took the same approach in response to accusations made against Roy Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Rob Porter, and, most recently, Jim Jordan. The White House has officially accused the more than 16 women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct of lying..

Quote:The disturbing thinking behind this is laid out in a passage from Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump gave some private advice to a friend who had acknowledged some bad behavior toward women. Real power is fear. It’s all about strength. Never show weakness. You’ve always got to be strong. Don’t be bullied. There is no choice. “You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women,” he said. “If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. That was a big mistake you made. You didn’t come out guns blazing and just challenge them. You showed weakness. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.” Now, Woodward doesn’t explain who this “friend” is. But the friend, it seems, admitted “bad behavior toward women” because, one would think, he really did behave badly. This — telling at least the partial truth — is what Trump reportedly said was so mistaken. The truth of the matter seems to have been immaterial to him.

Quote:A top professor at Yale Law School who strongly endorsed supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a “mentor to women” privately told a group of law students last year that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models” and would provide advice to students about their physical appearance if they wanted to work for him, the Guardian has learned. Amy Chua, a Yale professor who wrote a bestselling book on parenting called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, was known for instructing female law students who were preparing for interviews with Kavanaugh on ways they could dress to exude a “model-like” femininity to help them win a post in Kavanaugh’s chambers, according to sources.

Quote:At 9:13 a.m. on Friday, Kellyanne Conway told reporters that President Trump didn’t need to be advised not to attack Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her — because he knew it was the wrong thing to do. “There’s no reason to attack her,” Conway said. “The president doesn’t need anybody to tell him. He does the right thing.” One minute later, Trump made Conway look like a fool. At 9:14 a.m., the president posted a tweet attacking Ford by suggesting she’s lying about her account of being assaulted at a party in the early 1980s. He suggested that her assault must not have been so bad if she didn’t report it to the police immediately.

Conway wasn’t the only person Trump made look ridiculous with his string of tweets attacking Ford. His tweets came less than 24 hours after CNN published a story headlined, “Aides quietly stunned by Trump’s respectful handling of Kavanaugh accuser.”

Quote:During a question-and-answer session with reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, President Trump was asked why he won’t order the FBI to investigate the sexual assault allegation made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The president’s rationale made no sense. “Well, it would seem that the FBI really doesn’t do that,” Trump said. “They’ve investigated [Kavanaugh via background checks] about six times before.” But as a reporter pointed out to Trump, the bureau would investigate if the president asked them to. There’s direct precedent for this. In 1991, when Anita Hill made sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, President Bush directed the FBI “to conduct a full, thorough and expeditious investigation.” 

“They would do it if you asked them to — would you consider doing it?” the reporter said to Trump. The president immediately changed his tune, ignoring the question and instead punting the matter to Republican senators. “Well, I would let the senators take their course,” Trump said. “Let the senators do it. They’re doing a very good job.”

Trump went on to say that the allegation “is hurting someone’s life very badly.” But he was referring to Kavanaugh, not Ford, who has been besieged with death threats and targeted harassment since she went public with her story about Kavanaugh allegedly assaulting her at a high school party in the early 1980s.

• Right-wingers blame the Democrats and in particular Senator Feinstein on this being a ploy to delay the nomination. However, Feinstein only respected the demand from Dr. Ford for privacy, and it's now in full display why that demand was made after Ford had to leave her house after numerous death threats.
  
• It would have benefited the Democrats if Feinstein wouldn't have resprected Dr. Ford's demand for privacy. 
  
• The Republicans didn't even give Gosurch (Obama's really quite moderate candidate for the Supreme Court) a hearing for a year or so, while they now argue the Supreme Court can't be without an empty seat for so long, ramming through the nomination process.
  
• If anyone thinks Dr. Ford made these accusations simply to hurt Kavanaugh should consider the (all too predictable) consequences..
  
• Why is there no Fed investigation, which the Bush' White House ordered in a similar case with Anita Hill and judge Thomas?
  

Quote:On Thursday night, conservative legal operative Ed Whelan sent a series of tweets suggesting that the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh were likely a case of mistaken identity. His evidence was that a high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s kind of looked like him, and lived in a childhood home that sounded similar to the home where Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, described the assault taking place.
This thin evidence was quickly torn apart. Political observers from across the aisle blasted Whelan for posting the classmate’s name and photograph and strongly implying, without evidence, that he committed sexual assault. It turns out the classmate, a middle school teacher whose name I don’t want to disseminate, was someone Ford knew; she told the Washington Post that “there is zero chance that I would confuse them.”
By Friday morning, the backlash was so overwhelming that Whelan, who is currently president of the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center, deleted his entire tweetstorm and apologized

This isn’t a case of a fringe conspiracy theory. Whelan is a well-connected guy in Republican legal circles with a long history of working on judicial nominations. He’s also a good friend of Kavanaugh’s and had reportedly been involved in the effort to get him confirmed. When you put these things together, it raises serious questions as to whether anyone in the White House or Congress knew about or helped coordinate the potentially libelous tweetstorm. It’s even possible that Kavanaugh himself was involved.

Whelan denied any communication with Kavanaugh or the White House about the theory — but, notably, did not mention anyone in Congress. There’s at least some circumstantial evidence that Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah who has supported Kavanaugh throughout the Ford saga, was looped in.

The tweetstorm was a clear attempt to defend Kavanaugh without engaging in the ugly business of calling Ford a liar. The problem, though, is that it ended up strongly suggesting that an uninvolved private citizen was a sex offender — hurting his reputation and dragging him into the spotlight without any good reason. This is in and of itself scandalous, and creates another controversy the Kavanaugh nomination can ill afford.

On Wednesday, Hatch’s spokesperson, Matt Whitlock, retweeted another Whelan tweet promoting a mistaken identity theory, telling people to “keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days.” (After Whelan’s thread came out, Whitlock deleted the tweet and denied having any foreknowledge of what Whelan was planning.)

Then on Thursday evening, the Washington Post reported that the “mistaken identity” argument was a central plank of the planned Kavanaugh defense against the Ford allegations.

• Ed Whelan is Kavanaugh's friend.
  
• In order to get his friend elected, he smeared another guy, a middle school teacher, put out his name and photo, and accused him of sexual assault, all to relieve the cloud hanging over his friend and get him elected to the Supreme Court.
  
• He didn't act alone, this was a well coordinated smear campaign by a PR firm.
  
• Orrin Hatch, the Republican Senator, had already suggested something similar early on, when he curiously argued that Christine Ford was likely mistaken and that Kavanaugh hadn't even been present on that party (which is curious in and of itself, as the time and date of the party aren't known).
  
• Kavanaugh hasn't distanced himself, at least not yet, and might very well have been involved as per the Washington Post, it was going to be the central plank of his defense.
  
• And of course Fox & Friends ran with the story.
  
• And now they all delete these tweets with one guy, Hatch assistant Matt Whitlock, even denying he had any knowledge, hahaha, can it be more brazen??
  

Quote:It turns out that the Keystone Cops detective work by conservative legal activist Ed Whelan — which set Washington abuzz with the promise of exonerating Brett Kavanaugh, only to be met by mockery and then partially retracted — was not his handiwork alone. CRC Public Relations, the prominent Alexandria, Virginia-based P.R. firm, guided Whelan through his roller-coaster week of Twitter pronouncements that ended in embarrassment and a potential setback for Kavanaugh’s hopes of landing on the high court, according to three sources familiar with their dealings.

After suggesting on Twitter on Tuesday that he had obtained information that would exculpate Kavanaugh from the sexual assault allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford, Whelan worked over the next 48 hours with CRC and its president, Greg Mueller, to stoke the anticipation. A longtime friend of Kavanaugh’s, Whelan teased his reveal — even as he refused to discuss it with other colleagues and close friends, a half dozen of them said. At the same time, he told them he was absolutely confident the information he had obtained would exculpate the judge. The hype ping-ponged from Republicans on Capitol Hill to Kavanaugh’s team in the White House, evidence of an extraordinarily successful public relations campaign that ultimately backfired when Whelan’s theory — complete with architectural drawings and an alleged Kavanaugh doppelgänger — landed with a thud on Twitter Thursday evening.

Quote:President Donald Trump for the first time directly challenged the woman who made a sexual assault allegation against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, part of a strategic shift designed to reframe the scandal as a partisan attack on his administration. The president, still in Las Vegas for a fundraiser before heading to Missouri for a rally, asserted on Twitter that Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, or her family would have reported the episode to law enforcement at the time it happened — when she was still in high school — if it “was as bad as she says.” He also openly tied her claims to Senate Democrats, who he accused of trying to “Obstruct & Resist & Delay.” One Republican close to the confirmation process said Trump, who has briefly commented on Ford’s allegations but had avoided directly questioning her credibility, led the decision to engage directly, in part in an effort to turn the crisis into a lever for motivating his conservative base with less than two months before November’s midterm elections.

Quote:A second woman has come forward alleging sexual misconduct by embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, days before his scheduled testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in response to a previous allegation of sexual assault. Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale University with Kavanaugh, told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and exposed himself to her while they were classmates there. “I remember a penis being in front of my face,” said Ramirez, who says she had been drinking. “I knew that's not what I wanted, even in that state of mind.”

Quote:Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, announced Sunday that he is representing a client with “credible information” regarding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his former classmate, Mark Judge. “I represent a woman with credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge,” Avenatti said on Twitter. “We will be demanding the opportunity to present testimony to the committee and will likewise be demanding that Judge and others be subpoenaed to testify.”

Quote:Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, is calling for the Senate to hear testimony from unnamed witnesses he claims can corroborate new allegations of sexual assault involving Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  Earlier on Sunday, Avenatti announced that he is representing a client with “credible information” regarding Kavanaugh and his former classmate, Mark Judge.

Quote:Brett Kavanaugh’s page in his high school yearbook offers a glimpse of the teenage years of the man who is now President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: lots of football, plenty of drinking, parties at the beach. Among the reminiscences about sports and booze is a mysterious entry: “Renate Alumnius.” The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Kavanaugh, who were described as the “Renate Alumni.” It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school. Two of Kavanaugh’s classmates say the mentions of Renate were part of the football players’ unsubstantiated boasting about their conquests.

“They were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate,” said Sean Hagan, a Georgetown Prep student at the time, referring to Kavanaugh and his teammates. “I can’t express how disgusted I am with them, then and now.” Kavanaugh’s years at Georgetown Prep, in a Maryland suburb of Washington, are under intense scrutiny because of allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her during high school. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation. He and Blasey are scheduled to testify Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh’s peers have given different accounts of what he was like. But his yearbook provides a contemporaneous glimpse of the elite Catholic school’s hard-drinking atmosphere — Kavanaugh’s personal page boasts, “100 kegs or bust” — and a culture that some describe as disrespectful to women.

Quote:Kavanaugh’s yearbook page has attracted attention as Ford’s story has gained steam, largely because it sure seems to portray Kavanaugh as a rowdy partier, not a straitlaced miniature adult. It’s entirely possible that a person’s yearbook entry does not necessarily testify to what kind of person they are. But Kavanaugh’s yearbook page is illustrative — and might even come up in Thursday’s hearing — not just because it shows the kind of person Kavanaugh wanted to be perceived as, but because it helps understand the accounts that have come out from Kavanaugh’s classmates and friends. Here’s the text of the yearbook entry, in full (with some names redacted). Annotations on particularly noteworthy elements are below.

Quote:Attorney Michael Avenatti has for days been claiming that he has a client with explosive information about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh — and on Wednesday, he and his client finally went public. On Twitter, Avenatti posted a sworn affidavit from Washington, DC, resident Julie Swetnick, who says she was present at numerous high school parties where Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge drank excessively and harassed women. Swetnick alleges that Kavanaugh, Judge, and others targeted women with drugs and alcohol to cause them to “lose their inhibitions” so they could be “gang raped” — and she says she was a victim of one of these “train” rapes. (She says that Judge and Kavanaugh were “present” when she was raped but does not directly accuse them of participating.)