Author: Henry Wray

As the messenger who first announced the outcome of the Mueller investigation, Attorney General William Barr has been thoroughly demonized by those unhappy with the message. Among other things, they accuse him of torching his reputation, lying to Congress, and even losing his soul. There are calls to impeach him, prosecute him for perjury, and lock him up in the capitol basement for contempt of Congress.

These unhinged attacks sprung initially from Barr’s March 24 letter conveying the Mueller report’s two main bottom lines: its unequivocal conclusion that Trump was not complicit in Russian election interference and its more equivocal conclusion (or non-conclusion) to neither charge Trump with obstruction of justice nor “exonerate” him. Critics claim that Barr’s letter misrepresented the report. They also criticize Barr’s determination announced in the letter that Mueller’s evidence was insufficient to establish an obstruction offense. The attacks have persisted weeks after release of the redacted but largely complete report.

No doubt the war against Barr reflects frustration over the results of Mueller’s investigation–that it put to rest the “collusion” narrative Democrats and much of the media relentlessly flogged for the past two years and that it stopped short of accusing Trump of a crime. There’s also considerable angst over where to take these issues now. Some on the right suggest that targeting Barr is a ploy to deter him from inquiring into the origins and initial phases of the Russian interference investigation. Whatever their motive(s), the attacks on Barr are spurious.

Barr’s March 24 letter accurately and fairly captured the two main bottom lines of Mueller’s report

Once word got out that Mueller’s report was done, Barr came under intense pressure to disclose something about it right away. Immediately releasing the full 448-page report or even its executive summaries was not an option since both needed review for redactions. Saying nothing would have generated a flood of criticism from all sides. Faced with this dilemma, Barr issued his March 24 letter reciting Mueller’s two “principal conclusions” as stated above.

The main criticism of Barr’s letter is that it failed to capture the many negative aspects of Trump’s behavior detailed in the report. However, the letter did not purport to be a summary of Mueller’s report; it simply announced Mueller’s bottom-line conclusions. Barr’s descriptions of Mueller’s bottom lines are entirely faithful to the report; he quoted them verbatim. By including Mueller’s statement that the investigation did not “exonerate” Trump, Barr clearly telegraphed that the report had significant negative content about him. If Barr wanted to mislead, he could have omitted this caveat and said only that Mueller did not charge Trump with obstruction. It’s also noteworthy that the report contained no “bombshells” that Barr omitted. Its content on obstruction primarily validates and fleshes out incidents involving Trump that were already widely known through Trump’s public statements and media-reported leaks.

Critics make much of Mueller’s March 27 letter to Barr, leaked on the eve of Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In it, Mueller complained that Barr’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions” (presumably on obstruction) and, as a result, “[t]here is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.” Mueller enclosed redacted versions of the introduction and executive summaries of his report and urged Barr to release them immediately. But Barr says Mueller assured him in a subsequent phone call that nothing in Barr’s letter was inaccurate or misleading; instead, according to Barr, Mueller was concerned about “misguided” media coverage. Barr also says Mueller declined his offer to review the letter in advance. Had Mueller accepted, he could have made known any concerns he had and worked with Barr to produce a mutually acceptable statement.

More fundamentally, the source of confusion over Mueller’s conclusion on obstruction is Mueller’s own curious treatment of this question, not anything Barr said about it. Indeed, this confusion has only intensified with release of the report. The report (II-1-2) says Mueller’s approach was heavily influenced by the Justice Department position that a sitting president cannot be criminally indicted but does not say he would have found criminal conduct but for this position. It goes on to say (II-2):

“[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

All of this hardly cleared the air on obstruction. Mueller did essentially the opposite of what everyone assumed his role to be: He declined to decide whether or not the evidence could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed a crime but opted to decide instead whether it conclusively proved his innocence. This strange approach has left politicians, pundits and the general public pretty much where they were before the report—still debating the obstruction question, usually along familiar pro- versus anti-Trump lines. (Hopefully, Mueller will eventually appear before Congress to clarify this and other aspects of his investigation and report.)

Barr appropriately made the prosecutorial decision on obstruction and his decision is sound on its merits.

Barr’s March 24 letter observed that Mueller’s failure to reach a traditional prosecutorial decision on obstruction left it to him to make this call. He then stated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, in consultation with other Justice officials, “concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” 

Critics question Barr’s determination on obstruction and, remarkably, even his right to make it. Taking the second point first, Barr clearly had both the right and responsibility to decide when Mueller wouldn’t. The notion advanced by some that Mueller didn’t “intend” for Barr to do so but instead wanted Congress to decide on obstruction in the context of impeachment is unsupported by the report and ludicrous on its face. Deciding whether Trump (or anyone else) has committed a federal crime warranting prosecution is manifestly the responsibility of the Justice Department. That responsibility ultimately rests with the Attorney General. Mueller’s “intent” is immaterial, although he surely understood this. (His March 27 letter did not question Barr’s decision on obstruction.)

Turning to the merits, it’s easy to argue, as many have, that aspects of Trump’s behavior described in the report align at least conceptually with the legal elements of obstruction. However, deciding whether to bring a criminal prosecution is a judgment call that entails more than conceptual box-checking. The key question is whether the government can prove each element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of an impartial jury. The Mueller report itself (II-7) points to several complications in prosecuting an obstruction case against Trump. Some of the incidents the report describes occurred in public view and were “facially lawful acts” under the president’s constitutional authority. Also, there was no underlying crime. The report notes that while the absence of an underlying crime does not preclude an obstruction prosecution, it does bear on the question of intent.  

There is, however, another consideration that makes successful prosecution of Trump highly unlikely: Trump took no concrete action to obstruct the investigation. He railed against the investigation from start to finish, viewing it (perhaps with some justification as it turns out) as a contrived effort by his opponents to undercut the legitimacy of his presidency. In the course of his often impulsive rants, he threatened to take various actions against it. However, Trump never followed through on any of these threatened actions although he certainly had the ability to carry them out.

The case for prosecuting Trump is based almost entirely on what he said, not what he did. For example, Trump asked Comey to go easy on Flynn but did nothing when Comey persisted; he urged Sessions to “unrecuse” himself and limit the scope of the investigation but did nothing when Sessions failed to do either; he demanded that subordinates fire Mueller but did nothing when they disregarded him. Obviously, he knew his wishes were not being carried out in these instances.

The only action Trump took potentially relating to the investigation was firing Comey. But the Mueller report (II-74) questions whether this had a predictable effect of impeding the investigation (in fact, of course, it had the opposite effect). In any event, the report (II-75) also indicated that the catalyst for firing Comey was not a desire to impede the investigation but Trump’s displeasure over Comey’s refusal to publicly acknowledge what he privately told Trump—that Trump was not a target.

Given these facts, how could a jury find beyond a reasonable doubt the requisite corrupt intent to convict Trump of obstruction? If Trump was intent on obstruction, he could have and surely would have carried out at least some of his potentially obstructive threats.

Making prosecution even more dubious, the White House provided extraordinary cooperation to Mueller. This couldn’t have happened without Trump’s acquiescence. Remarkably, Trump allowed White House Counsel McGahn to undergo 30 hours of questioning by Mueller’ investigators. (His testimony is widely considered the most damaging to Trump of all the evidence Mueller developed.) A president bent on obstruction never would have allowed his White House counsel to be interrogated by the investigators. Instead, he would have invoked executive privilege and otherwise stonewalled the investigators’ access to White House staff and records.

Why do Democrats continue to persecute Barr?

While Barr might have handled some things differently, he did nothing that calls into question his honesty or integrity. But even if Democrats disagree, the salient question for them at this point should be what the Mueller report means in relation to Trump, not Barr, and specifically whether it provides a basis for impeachment. Instead, they still have their guns trained on Barr. House Judiciary Democrats rejected Barr’s offer to testify before them based on an unusual demand that committee staffers participate in the questioning. (This came complete with silly theatrical stunts.) Then they voted to hold Barr in contempt for refusing their demand for the few remaining redacted lines of the Mueller report they can’t already see—a demand Barr probably can’t legally meet because these lines contain grand jury information. They are now considering physically arresting Barr and locking him up in the capitol basement jail.

Most likely the continuing assaults on Barr are diversionary or temporizing tactics by Democrats to forestall their day of reckoning on impeachment. That’s perhaps understandable. While the Democratic left flank is intent on impeaching Trump, cooler heads apparently recognize the lesson of the Clinton impeachment fiasco: Attempting to remove a sitting president without bipartisan and broad public support (which is lacking here) is folly both substantively and politically. It rightly comes across as nothing but a partisan coup to undo the result of a legitimate election and makes us look like a banana republic.

Many political trial balloons have been floated in the contest for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. One truly awful idea–advanced by such groups as “the 1/20/21 Project,” “Demand Justice” and the aptly-named “Pack the Courts”–is to increase the number of Supreme Court justices in order to nullify the current majority, whose decisions they don’t like. This radical idea should have died in the 1930s with the failure of FDR’s infamous court-packing scheme. Regrettably, however, several presidential candidates have expressed openness to it.

Why is this such a terrible idea? Because it poses an existential threat to the federal judiciary. Federal courts can’t function effectively unless their judges are politically independent and objective both in fact and in public perception. Every federal judge takes a statutory oath to “do equal right” to all litigants by dispensing justice impartially. Controversial cases arise frequently, often producing decisions that are unpopular with one political faction or another and subject to intense debate over their legal merits. This is to be expected. However, the judiciary will lose its credibility, and hence its value in our system of government, if its decisions come to be widely viewed as the product of political bias rather than objective legal analysis.

The resurrected court-packing scheme rests on two premises that are antithetical to the concept of an independent, impartial judiciary. One is the explicit and spurious charge that the Supreme Court as now constituted is illegitimate. The other is an implicit mindset that judges are mere politicians in robes who serve the agenda of the party responsible for their appointment. As one leading court-packing proponent, former Hillary Clinton political operative Brian Fallon, puts it:

“At Demand Justice, we strongly believe that reforming the court — especially by expanding it — is the cornerstone for re-building American democracy . . . The Kavanaugh court [sic?] is a partisan operation, and democracy simply cannot function when stolen courts operate as political shills. We are thrilled to work in coalition with the team at Pack the Courts to undo the politicization of the judiciary.”

The hypocrisy in describing court-packing as a means to depoliticize the Court is breathtaking. Over recent decades, both parties have done everything within their power to politicize judicial appointments to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The court-packing proposal, if implemented, would put the final nail in the coffin. Court-packing is fundamentally an exercise in raw political power designed to offset one group of supposed “political shill” judges by adding political shills more to the proponents’ liking. Its objective is not to depoliticize the Court but to re-politicize it in a different direction by shifting its alleged bias from right to left. The claim that this will somehow advance democracy is equally risible.

In addition to its intellectual dishonesty, this ultimate escalation in partisanship would likely trigger a continuous expansion in Court membership with no end in sight. If Democrats won the White House and Senate in 2020 and succeeded in packing on enough additional justices to shift the majority to their side, Republicans could be counted on to add even more justices in order to regain the majority the next time they controlled the appointment process.  

Like other proponents (see here and here), Fallon contends that the current Court majority is illegitimate because Republicans “stole” a Supreme Court seat from the Democrats when they stonewalled President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace the deceased Antonin Scalia. This argument is disingenuous since Democrats almost surely would have stonewalled a Republican president’s nomination had the situation been reversed. (See here.) Both parties share a sordid history in recent years of blocking the other party’s judicial nominees for political reasons. One particularly shameful example was the Chuck Schumer-led filibuster against Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Schumer feared that placing such an outstanding nominee as Estrada on the D.C. Circuit would position him eventually to become the first Hispanic-American elevated to the Supreme Court.

The notion that the Supreme Court seat was “stolen” from Democrats also is nonsense. Obviously it never belonged to them in the first place. No president is entitled to confirmation of his or her nominations; the Senate has the constitutional right to withhold its advice and consent to Supreme Court (and any other) nominations. Republicans deserved harsh criticism for denying Garland a confirmation hearing, but they had no obligation to confirm him. In the final analysis, Democrats “lost” the vacant Supreme Court seat (if they insist on viewing it that way) not by theft but because they lost the 2016 presidential election. In fact, this vacancy may well have determined the outcome of the election. Polling confirms that Supreme Court appointments are a key consideration for presidential voters, and the pending vacancy was a major factor in 2016 voting, particularly among Trump voters.

No one who values and respects the federal judiciary could embrace the court-packing proposal as a matter of principle. Supporting it probably is bad politics as well. While court-packing may offer red meat to Democratic primary voters, at least those on the far left, it would likely be a significant political negative in the general election. Unlike court-packing advocates, most Americans favor an independent, nonpartisan federal judiciary and are concerned that the courts are already too politicized. (See below.)

There is a desperate need to halt the downward spiral of cynical moves and counter-moves by both parties that have driven judicial appointments ever deeper into the hyperpartisan abyss. However, the remedy certainly is not to resurrect court-packing. Instead, we must somehow find a way to revive the bipartisan appointment process that served the Nation well in the not too distant past. It featured an understanding between the political parties that well-qualified judicial nominees of good character deserved confirmation regardless of which party controlled the White House and Senate. This understanding applied to both “liberal” and “conservative” nominees as long as they fell within the mainstream of legal thought. There was also a bipartisan consensus that election results matter and thus a president’s choice of nominees was entitled to some degree of deference.

Under this longstanding and commonsense regime, Supreme Court justices as ideologically disparate as Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were confirmed by overwhelming Senate majorities. Unfortunately, we have now descended to the point where party line votes are the standard practice for Supreme Court and even lower federal court confirmations. The threat this poses to the continued viability of the judiciary is quite real. While the public still has far greater confidence in the federal judiciary than the two political branches, they view judicial decisions as increasingly tainted by political bias. Court-packing would re-enforce this perception in spades.   

At a time when we need reliable media, the media is becoming ever less reliable. Public trust in it is low. While broad-based accusations of “fake news” against the mainstream media may be largely spurious, embarrassing examples of false stories surface with some regularity. Recent examples include the Special Counsel’s repudiation of a widely circulated BuzzFeed report, the Covington high school boys fiasco, and the Jussie Smollett hoax. Such media misfires stem from excessive and uncritical reliance on anonymous sources, mindless echoing of social media feeds, rushing stories to publication in order to scoop the competition, and failure to seek verification of stories deemed “too good to check”.  

Serious questions of tendentious or at least dubious editorial judgment frequently arise as well. One recent example is the Washington Post’s initial failure to publish Vanessa Tyson’s sexual assault allegation against Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax versus its decision to run full speed with Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Brett Kavanaugh. There is no apparent substantive justification for the Post’s starkly different treatment of the two accusations. Indeed, Tyson’s story seems, if anything, the more worthy of publication. Both accusers are serious people who leveled serious charges against prominent public figures. Tyson’s charge of actual rape by Fairfax was more severe than Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh drunkenly groped her. Tyson’s account also was more plausible on its face since she offered full specifics while Blasey Ford could not provide many key details.

The Post explained its decision to decline Tyson’s story as follows:

“The Post, in phone calls to people who knew Fairfax from college, law school and through political circles, found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him. Without that, or the ability to corroborate the woman’s account—in part because she had not told anyone what happened—the Post did not run the story.”

This explanation doesn’t hold water. At the time the Post published Blasey Ford’s accusation, there were no similar complaints against Kavanaugh either. Likewise, there was no independent corroboration of her account—just a couple of somewhat vague statements she had made to third parties. Notably, the Post had the ability to seek independent corroboration of Blasey Ford’s account but made no serious effort to do so. She named “two other teenagers” who were present when she was assaulted, one who was a close friend of hers. However, the Post merely left messages for them on the day it published her story. When Senate investigators contacted the two individuals shortly after the story appeared, evidently without difficulty reaching them, neither corroborated her account.

On the surface, all that’s left to distinguish the two cases is that one of the accused is a white Republican while the other is an African-American Democrat. Thus, critics can easily portray this as an example of bias—political, racial, or both—on the part of a leftist, elitist publication.  

Unfortunately, media outlets rarely embrace the kind of transparency, candor and accountability regarding their actions that they demand from those they criticize. In fact, they are regressing. Several major news outlets, including the Post and the New York Times, abolished their internal “ombudsmen”. This not only freed them from somewhat arms-length internal critics but left the field open for less knowledgeable sources with their own biased agendas to fill the gap in media criticism.

Clearly, there is a need for greater self-awareness and critical self-examination on the part of the media. A first step in this direction would be for the Post and others to restore the ombudsman position. While this is far from a solution, it would at least show some openness to serious criticism and accountability. Surely it would also do more to promote increased public trust in the media than sponsoring Super Bowl ads.

President Trump recently announced his intention to issue an executive order that would deny United States citizenship to children born in this country to illegal immigrants. Whether this is a serious proposal or simply a pre-election political ploy remains to be seen. Regardless, it provides a useful case study in two contrasting theories of constitutional interpretation: “originalism” and “living constitutionalism.” “Originalists” (usually conservatives) believe that the Constitution should be interpreted and applied in accordance with the generally understood meaning of its language at the time of its adoption. They view the Constitution as a document whose provisions, as thus understood, are enduring law and can be changed only by formal amendment. By contrast, “living constitutionalists” (usually liberals) tend to view the Constitution as a fluid and malleable document whose meaning can change over time, without amendment, in order to accommodate evolving societal values, norms and conditions.

The Constitution’s birthright citizenship provision is set forth in the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” On its face, this language clearly covers the American-born offspring of illegal immigrants. They are in fact born in the United States and are subject to its jurisdiction, i.e., its judicial authority and laws. The original understanding of the provision is consistent with its plain language. Its main purpose was to overturn the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision and grant citizenship to African-Americans born in the United States. However, the congressional debates on the proposed constitutional amendment make clear that the language was viewed as all-encompassing with the sole exception of persons not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. Government. This exception, in turn, was understood to apply only to children of foreign diplomats and children of the members of certain Native American tribes which were not considered subject to U.S. law at that time. (A later law made all Native Americans citizens at birth.)

Given the above, it’s hard to see how any self-respecting originalist could support Trump’s proposal. If he implements it, the originalist majority on the current Supreme Court will undoubtedly rule against him in the event the proposal survives judicial challenge long enough to reach the high court.

It’s less certain that judges espousing the living Constitution theory of interpretation, and thus feeling less constrained by the original meaning of the constitutional language, would come out the same way. Living constitutionalists might reason that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never considered illegal immigrants, particularly at their current volumes, and could not have intended to confer automatic citizenship on all their children. Accordingly, they might well conclude that a broader, evolutionary reading of the “subject to the jurisdiction” exception would better serve contemporary conditions and needs—i.e., a reading that extends the exception to cover those in the country illegally who owe no allegiance to the United States.

I’d submit that the above analysis offers three cautions for those inclined to prefer living constitutionalism over originalism: (1) While originalism may be regarded as a conservative legal approach, it can produce liberal policy results. (2) The notion that the Constitution “evolves” does not necessarily mean that it evolves only in the direction of expanding constitutional rights; it can just as easily evolve to restrict such rights. (3) If judicial interpretation of the Constitution is not anchored to its text as originally understood, there are no objective criteria to constrain judges. They are left free to act on their own subjective views of how best to mold the Constitution to fit contemporary needs and values as they see them.

Given the hyper-politicization and downright toxicity that define Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, it’s hard to predict what bearing an objective analysis of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against him will have on the outcome. Very little of the massive political and media attention heaped on this subject addresses the specifics of the case. Another challenge is the age of the accusation and lack of key factual details supplied by Blasey Ford. If one does focus on the specifics, however, a recent development looks to be highly relevant.

Last Saturday night CNN reported that Blasey Ford had identified a longtime friend, Leland Keyser, as someone who attended the party where the alleged assault occurred. After Keyser was contacted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, her lawyer submitted a statement to the Committee that “Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without Dr. Ford.” Keyser’s statement means that none of the four people named by Blasey Ford as attending the party support her claim that it ever happened. Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, whom she named as a witness to the assault, both vehemently denied her allegation. The other person she named as being at the party but not witnessing the assault, Patrick (“PJ”) Smythe, told the Committee he had no knowledge of any of it.

On top of the absence of witness corroboration, there seem to be no other investigative avenues available to either confirm or refute Blasey Ford’s accusation given her own lack of recall as to the date (even the year), location, and other basic aspects of the alleged assault. Therefore, the truth or falsity of her charges probably can never be determined definitively. Nevertheless, Keyser’s lack of knowledge casts serious doubt on Blasey Ford’s account as she has presented it thus far, particularly since Keyser is a close friend and supporter of hers. (She says she believes Blasey Ford even though she cannot vouch for any of her story.)

Blasey Ford and her lawyers brushed off Keyser’s lack of recall. Blasey Ford told the Washington Post that she didn’t expect Keyser to remember “because nothing remarkable happened there, as far as Keyser was aware.” In commenting on the CNN story, Blasey Ford’s lawyer added that Keyser couldn’t be expected to remember the party because “nothing of consequence happened to her.”

These explanations strain credulity when considered in relation to Blasey Ford’s account of the events of that night. According to her Post interview and letter to Senator Feinstein, the “stumbling drunk” Kavanaugh and Judge “corralled” her into a bedroom as she was headed for a bathroom up a short flight of stairs from the living room. They played loud music from the bedroom and Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams. She feared Kavanaugh might kill her. Kavanaugh was on top of her on a bed trying to remove her clothing. At some point Judge jumped on top of Kavanaugh and her, “sending all three tumbling.” She got away, ran across to the bathroom, and locked herself in. (It’s reasonable to assume that Blasey Ford would have resumed screaming audibly upon her escape from Kavanaugh.) Kavanaugh and Judge then “loudly stumbled” down the stairs and engaged the other two people who were there (Keyser and Smythe). She subsequently exited the bathroom, ran down the stairs, and “fled the house.”

The events Blasey Ford describes were raucous and dramatic to say the least. Surely they would have been quite “remarkable” to Keyser, as well as frightening and memorable, if she had noticed any of them. Moreover, it’s hardly plausible that Keyser could have been completely oblivious to the loud and chaotic scene going on around her, particularly since she was one of only two other people in the house. The lawyer’s suggestion that Keyser put all of it out of her mind because nothing bad happened to her personally is no more plausible.

Finally, victims of sexual assaults often fail to tell others about them for a variety of reasons. But is it plausible that Blasey Ford would not have said anything to Keyser about Kavanaugh and Judge either as she was fleeing the house or within days thereafter, if only to warn her about them? After all, she describes them as dangerous, perhaps even homicidal, sexual predators and it was certainly foreseeable that her close friend Keyser might encounter them again. At the very least, one would have expected Blasey Ford to give Keyser (as well as her other friends who ran in the same circles) a general warning to steer clear of these guys without necessarily going into the details of her assault.

Of course, none of the above proves that Blasey Ford’s accusation is untrue. Absent a Perry Mason moment at the upcoming hearing or another game-changing development, we probably will never know for sure where the truth lies here. However, the lack of recall by anyone supposedly present at the party, particularly Keyser, raises a host of questions for Blasey Ford. Hopefully, they will be explored fully and fairly at the hearing.

N.B. The Kavanaugh confirmation mess changes daily. New uncorroborated charges of sexual misconduct against him emerged last night. It would not be surprising to see more come out of the woodwork as the week progresses. However, such accusations may backfire against Kavanaugh’s opponents and generate sympathy for him if they continue to be unsubstantiated and increasingly far-fetched. For example, Michael Avenatti, showboating lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, claims to have multiple witnesses who say Kavanaugh organized and participated in gang rapes of drunken girls while in high school. If the FBI missed something of this magnitude during their many background investigations of Kavanaugh, calls for them to do more on the case clearly are misguided.

 

 

 

 

 

Republicans were roundly condemned for denying Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing. If his hearing would have degenerated into anything like Kavanaugh’s, maybe they did him a favor. The Kavanaugh hearing unfolded with all the seriousness and probity of a Jerry Springer show. CNN derided it as “one of the most vindictive and ill-tempered congressional hearings in memory.” The New York Times described it as the “new reality” of Supreme Court confirmation hearings, consisting of “pandemonium, protesters and razor-sharp partisan lines.” Republican Senator Lindsay Graham observed that comparing the hearing to a circus was unfair to circuses.

Republicans got it off on the wrong foot by pushing too quickly in their desire to get Kavanaugh seated by the start of the Supreme Court’s October term. This resulted in an obviously rushed document-production process featuring a massive data dump on the eve of the hearing and the initial withholding from public access of documents that were later cleared for release. However, disputes over documents were largely a sideshow. Most Democrats announced their undying opposition to Kavanaugh as soon as he was nominated or even before. It’s clear that all Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee were poised to vote no even had they been furnished every unredacted page of every document that passed Kavanaugh’s way during his White House years.

With Chairman Grassley only 13 words into his opening statement, Democrats began taking turns attempting to sabotage the hearing with carefully choreographed interruptions expressing faux outrage over document issues. They were abetted by equally organized outbursts from plants in the audience. One wonders how the protesters seemingly monopolized public seating. Did they crowd out ordinary members of the public who simply wanted to observe the hearing? Do they face any consequences? No matter; Democratic senators generally praised the protesters for their outrageous behavior. In a particularly disingenuous exchange, Senator Durbin told Kavanaugh:

“There have been times where [the protesting] was uncomfortable. I’m sure it was for your children. I hope you can explain this to them at some point but it does represent what we are about in this democracy . . . What we’ve heard is the noise of democracy.”

What was Kavanuagh to “explain” to his young daughters, that the vituperation heaped on their dad by an uncivil mob was a civics lesson-worthy example of democracy in action?

Outbursts from the audience persisted throughout the hearing as did grandstanding and demagoguery by senators opposed to Kavanaugh. Two Judiciary Committee Democrats, using the hearing as a stage to audition for their upcoming presidential election bids, led the charge. Kamala Harris was the first to interrupt Grassley and later drew attention by her evidently false and McCarthyesque insinuations that Kavanaugh had contacts with Trump lawyers relating to the Mueller investigation. However, the grandstanding Oscar went to Cory (“Spartacus”) Booker, who flaunted his courage in violating Senate rules and risking expulsion to release confidential emails about Kavanaugh. It turned out that the emails already had been cleared for release, as he apparently knew. In any event, they had little significance. (See here and here.)

There’s a tendency to pick “winners” and “losers” from such events. In that spirit, I’d offer the following:

Kavanaugh was the primary winner. He successfully executed the standard nominee game plan of displaying legal acumen while saying little of substance, avoiding major gaffs, and suffering abuse from senators as gladly as possible. From a nominee’s perspective, the confirmation process has become akin to a fraternity initiation rite in which the goal is to emerge unscathed from a few days of unpleasant but inevitable senatorial hazing.

Presidential wannabes Harris and Booker also could be considered winners insofar as their histrionics played well with the Democratic base and their media allies. (See here and here.) However, this doesn’t bode well for the public. It signals that Democrats plan to defeat Trump in 2020 by out-Trumping him with falsehoods, violation of norms, and boorish behavior that equals or exceeds his own.

It’s hard to see any positives for other Committee Democrats. They seem to have won no converts. If anything, their over-the-top theatrics probably solidified support for Kavanaugh among Republicans and pushed the few Democratics still on the fence closer to voting for him. One of these fence-sitters, Joe Manchin, said of their tactics: “Not the way I was raised.”

In fairness, Democrats had little ability to impede Kavanaugh. They effectively made themselves irrelevant bystanders this time around with their pointless filibuster of the Gorsuch nomination. Their only realistic goal was to show their base what a disruptive “resistance” they could be. But their efforts fell short even here as they were still rebuked by leftist interest groups. These groups reserved special scorn for Ranking Committee Member Dianne Feinstein who was the one Democrat to refrain from the initial interruptions and, even worse, had the temerity to apologize to Kavanaugh for the “circumstances” of the hearing.

In the final analysis, the primary losers from this sorry spectacle are our governmental institutions, and ultimately therefore, all of us. For those (hopefully few) who take it seriously, the hyperbolic rhetoric about Kavanaugh undermines confidence in his integrity as a judge. More generally, the increasing politicization of judicial confirmations demeans and threatens the integrity of the federal judiciary as a whole. Partisans on both sides constantly reinforce by their words and actions a growing perception that judges are merely “politicians in robes” who decide cases based on their policy preferences rather than objective legal criteria.

The Senate also emerges as a major loser. Its abuse of confirmation hearings over the years has stripped them of any value. Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are of surprisingly recent vintage. The first occurred in 1916, and it was not until 1959 that a nominee was subjected to serious questioning. Hearings over the next few decades were sometimes illuminating in exposing the weak qualifications or ethical shortcomings of several nominees. However, their value greatly diminished in the aftermath of the 1987 Robert Bork fiasco. Bork, an eminently qualified if arrogant nominee, engaged in substantive and robust debate with Senators at his ill-fated confirmation hearing. For this, he was mistreated so severely that his name became a verb. (Bork: To “obstruct (someone, especially a candidate for public office) through systematic defamation or vilification.”)

Later nominees learned from Bork’s experience that the best approach is to say as little as possible about their substantive legal views. This led current Justice Elena Kagan to describe confirmation hearings (some years before her own) as a “vapid, hollow charade.” With Kavanaugh, the hearings have degenerated from charade to downright ugly farce. On top of this, the willingness (even enthusiasm) of Senator Booker and others to flout Senate rules and release confidential documents (or at least pretend to do so) will likely result in even greater reticence to share documents with the Senate for future confirmations.

Confirmation hearings have become so worthless, if not worse than worthless, that some have called for their abolition. A less extreme approach might be to remove cameras from the hearing room. This would at least discourage the shameless posturing and demonstrations. One recurring question asked at these hearings is whether the Supreme Court is right to prohibit television coverage of its proceedings. Kavanaugh’s hearing certainly strengthens the case for continuing the ban.

The media face major challenges in the age of Trump when they are labeled the “enemy of the people” and their work product is condemned as “fake news.” In the face of such attacks, it’s perhaps understandable that many journalists respond in kind. However, public confidence in the media has been on the decline for years, well before Trump came on the scene. If journalists want to regain their credibility, they need to move away from their fixation on Trump and take a hard look in the mirror. There are many root causes for poor perceptions of the media that have nothing to do with Trump’s bombast.

Self-absorption. While the media perform a vital service in our society, they tend to focus too much on themselves and exaggerate their own importance. Grandstanding reporters like CNN’s Jim Acosta draw media coverage but probably turn off most of the public. The recent organized campaign of anti-Trump editorials came across as overly defensive in bemoaning the victimization of journalists. At the same time, the media seem reluctant to assume responsibility when misreporting occurs as it inevitably does. Prominent retractions and corrections are rare. Also, several major newspapers weakened accountability by abolishing their in-house “ombudsmen.”

Over-reliance on anonymous sources. National political coverage today features too little original fact-gathering and too much regurgitation of leaks from anonymous sources. This incestuous process serves the interests of leakers pushing their own agendas, often through actions that are unethical or even criminal. Reporters also benefit since they invest little effort beyond cultivating their sources. However, it doesn’t serve the public, who are left with no way of assessing the credibility of the reports.

A striking example is CNN’s recent “bombshell” story that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen would attest to Trump’s prior knowledge of his son’s infamous Trump Tower meeting. (More on this below.) The story was quickly parroted by other media outlets but now has been largely debunked. Meanwhile, CNN still stands by its story. This episode violates many journalistic ethical standards, including the following:

• Take responsibility for the accuracy of work.
• Verify information before releasing it.
• Use original sources whenever possible.
• Identify sources clearly to give the public as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources.
• Consider sources’ motives before promising anonymity. Reserve anonymity for sources who may face danger, retribution or other harm and have information that cannot be obtained elsewhere. Explain why anonymity was granted.
• Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently.

Unfortunately, much reporting today violates one or more of these standards although less dramatically than the CNN episode.

Insularity, superficiality, and groupthink. Much journalism today lacks context, critical analysis and insight. These shortcomings recur across the ideological spectrum and probably stem more from intellectual laziness than bias. A prime example, and the greatest single hit to media credibility in recent history, was their almost universal cluelessness over the 2016 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath of the election, most media types blamed poor polling. However, based on additional analysis, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight attributed the failure to–

“real shortcomings in how American politics are covered, including pervasive groupthink among media elites, an unhealthy obsession with the insider’s view of politics, a lack of analytical rigor, a failure to appreciate uncertainty, a sluggishness to self-correct when new evidence contradicts pre-existing beliefs, and a narrow viewpoint that lacks perspective from the longer arc of American history.”

A study published in the Columbia Journalism Review sounded similar themes, concluding that “fixing the information ecosystem is at least as much about improving the real news as it about stopping the fake stuff.”

There is little evidence of lessons learned from the 2016 debacle. Most media outlets still appear to  filter what and how they report through narrow paradigms and serve largely as echo chambers for those perspectives. Similar themes are repackaged day after day in news stories and opinion pieces. For example, much of the media have flogged the theme of possible Trump complicity in Russian 2016 election interference ever since the election despite the absence of any supporting evidence to date.

So wedded are they to the collusion narrative that they cite as confirmation facts that imply the opposite. A recurring example is the Trump Tower meeting in which Russians offered to provide “dirt” on Clinton but actually came to lobby on another issue. It defies common sense that this farcical bait-and-switch meeting would have occurred if there existed an actual collusive back channel between Trump forces and the Russians. (See here and here.)

Mixing fact and opinion. The line between factual reporting and editorializing is increasingly blurred. One troublesome example is “fact-checking.” A recent study found that almost 25 percent of the Washington Post’s fact-check columns over an extended period addressed opinions rather than statements of fact. The Post’s fact-checkers have come in for criticism even when they assess facts. In  one case they distorted and then assigned their worst rating of four “Pinocchios” to a statement by Trump that was factually accurate and straightforward. Considering that Trump spews falsehoods constantly, fact-checking him should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Yet fact-checkers undermine their credibility when they overreach like this.

Absence of engagement and analysis. There is plenty of ideologically tilted reporting and punditry to choose from; it’s easy to find content that suits every taste. However, these contrasting narratives are like ships passing in the night. What’s missing is substantive analysis that engages with and meaningfully explores competing viewpoints. The only media outlet I can think of that does this consistently is PBS. Sadly, the public now may be so polarized that there is no longer a commercially viable market for the kind of objective, in-depth coverage that programs such as the PBS News Hour provide.

*                             *                             *

Surely the Trump era presents a critical need for objective, substantive, and credible journalism. However, much of our media descends to Trump’s level rather than rising to the challenges he poses. Unfortunately, journalistic excesses play into Trump’s hands by diverting attention from his actions, providing fodder for his supporters, and giving pause to those who are skeptical of him. This will only change if journalists get a grip, step up their game, and reform their practices.

Supreme Court confirmation battles of late bring out the worst in whichever political party is playing defense. The process becomes more debased with each succeeding nomination. Continuing this sad trend, early signs indicate that the Kavanaugh nomination could be the ugliest yet. Kavanaugh is obviously well qualified by intellect, experience, and judicial temperament. While a solid conservative, he is clearly within the legal mainstream and his positions frequently have been adopted by the Supreme Court. It also appears, at least as of now, that he presents no ethical concerns. The only character flaw identified thus far is the scandalous fact, breathlessly reported by the Washington Post’s investigative staff, that he once “piled up credit card debt” to buy baseball tickets for himself and his friends and to finance home improvements. (Apparently the debt was paid off.)

Nevertheless, almost all Democrats are poised to vote against Kavanaugh even before the confirmation process gets into full swing. They are led by Chuck Schumer, who vows to “oppose him with everything I’ve got.” The Post reports that Schumer joined all of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee outside the Supreme Court on the day following the nomination “to deliver a direct appeal to Americans to rise up in opposition to Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.” Schumer and most Democrats are refusing even to meet with Kavanaugh until a deal is reached on their demand for a massive trove of documents Kavanaugh processed during his White House service, many of which seem irrelevant to his confirmation.

Hyperbolic rhetoric and distortions of Kavanaugh’s record are flooding the media. (See, for example, here and here.) The most extreme instance of this (so far) is a petition  opposing Kavanaugh that describes him as “an intellectually and morally bankrupt ideologue” and—wait for it–a threat to human life. The petition concludes with an ominous warning that “people will die if he is confirmed.” This petition was not produced by the Onion, late night TV comics, or grandstanding Hollywood lefties. Rather, it comes from alumni and faculty of Yale Law School and other branches of that university who are, presumably, otherwise rational. Republican Senator Ben Sasse aptly observed on the day after the nomination: “We’re less than 24 hours into this, and folks are already declaring that if you can’t see that Brett Kavanaugh is a cross between Lex Luthor and Darth Vader, then you apparently aren’t paying enough attention.”

With the ink barely dry on the nomination papers, we’ve already descended into “Kavanaugh Derangement Syndrome” territory. Unfortunately, it’s likely to get worse as the confirmation process moves forward.

 

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out who’s worse: Trump or his critics. Trump clearly hit a new low with his disgraceful Helsinki press conference in which he took the word of Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election. His performance was rightly greeted with almost universal scorn across the political spectrum. (Faced with overwhelming criticism, Trump now claims, no doubt disingenuously, that he “misspoke.”) Repeating a familiar pattern, however, some Trump critics couldn’t resist going beyond the merits and descending to his level with their own outrageous hyperbole.

The most egregious excess was the accusation that Trump’s statements at the press conference somehow amounted to “treason.” One might expect this kind of nonsense from late night TV comics and hopelessly biased politicians and pundits. However, respected columnist Thomas Friedman joined in as did former CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan’s version takes the cake. He tweeted:

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

These charges are baseless. Article III, section 3 of the Constitution states that “[t]reason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution. It is well established that the definition can be met only when the United States is engaged in declared or open warfare with such “enemies.” One expert observed that the framers saw the need to define  treason so narrowly and to place it in the Constitution in order to ensure that this concept was not weaponized for use against political opponents.

Of course, that is exactly what Trump’s critics are doing here. Such empty rhetorical excess plays into Trump’s hands by undermining the credibility of those who voice it—particularly Brennan, a central player in the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference. It also serves to further politicize this already thoroughly politicized subject. The threat of continuing efforts by Russia to undermine the integrity of our elections is undoubtedly real, and it could become critical if the Russians (or other bad actors) are able to exploit our cyber vulnerabilities and penetrate state election machinery. Continuing to treat this subject as a political football and using it to bait Trump impedes the vital mission of investigating these threats thoroughly and objectively so we can adopt the necessary countermeasures.

 

When it comes to Supreme Court confirmations, the hypocrisy by both political parties is as transparent as it is breathtaking. Recall the (legitimate) outrage voiced by Democrats not long ago when Republican Leader McConnell refused to accord the slightest good faith consideration to former President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, a highly qualified candidate for the Court. Fast forward to President Trump’s nomination yesterday of Brett Kavanaugh, another highly qualified candidate. As soon as the Kavanaugh nomination was announced and before the confirmation process began, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to “oppose him with everything I’ve got.”  A number of other Democratic Senators echoed this pledge. At least one Democratic Senator announced his refusal to consider Trump’s nominee even before the nomination was announced. The substantive difference between McConnell’s stance on Garland and the Democrats’ stance on Kavanaugh is?