committee had the same authority to interview witnesses as the FBI, and the FBI would simply turn over its interviews without offering a conclusion. Feinstein, boldly, then brought up Avenatti’s rape allegations, saying she understood Kavanaugh was denying them. “That is emphatically what I’m saying. Emphatically,” he said, calling the gang rape claim a joke and a farce. “Would you like to say more about it?” Feinstein asked. “No,” he responded immediately, eliciting laughter from the room. Some of Feinstein’s colleagues, including some whose votes were in play, were surprised and appalled that she gave the outlandish allegations credence.
Mitchell then asked him some more factual questions about his drinking, sexual behavior, and his calendars. Just three questioners in, the team from the White House counsel’s office realized that Kavanaugh needed time for his emotions to cool.
Everything had changed in the previous hour. And everyone involved in the confirmation effort, whether at the White House or on the Hill, knew it. All of them were surprised at the tearful reaction they had to his emotional testimony.
After so many years of seeing conservatives give in, Kavanaugh’s supporters were moved by his bold defense of his life, his reputation, and the of rule of law. The display of courage and righteous indignation moved nearly everyone to tears. Men and women in the war room, in the hearing room, and at the White House were crying. And social media reflected the dismay of people throughout the country at the climate of mob justice that could tear down their honorable husbands and sons. Kavanaugh was fighting not only for himself but for everybody who had been unfairly attacked.
Media personalities, on the other hand, were struggling to accept what they had just witnessed. NBC’s Lester Holt said Kavanaugh “still seemed to be trying to find his composure and his footing as he once again continues to deny all the accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford.”13
“I mean, where do you even begin?” asked NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, criticizing Kavanaugh’s reference to the 2016 campaign and President Trump. Chuck Todd said that the speech might have played well with the president but might not play well in the rest of America. Because Rachel Mitchell was asking tough questions of Kavanaugh after her apparent gentleness with Ford, Todd concluded that Republican senators had “made that decision to protect themselves, not the nomination, which tells you what they’re really probably most concerned about, which is election day. Because this is not how you help him, this is how you help the Republicans.”14
Savannah Guthrie said, “He put it all out there, made a political argument, local argument, personal argument. How could you as a human not watch that and feel gut-wrenched.”15
Jeffrey Toobin of CNN reacted emotionally to Kavanaugh’s assertion that the smears against him were, among other things, “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.” Toobin interpreted that remark as a comment on Bill and Hillary Clinton. “This was a deeply political statement designed to appeal to Republicans,” he said.16
A reliable defender of the Clintons who had written a defensive book on President Clinton’s impeachment, Toobin misinterpreted Kavanaugh’s remark. He was talking about the Clinton supporters behind the groups that were fueling the attacks on him. Many of these people were clearly motivated in part by his participation in the independent counsel’s investigation of the 1990s. Kavanaugh did not say, or even suggest, that the Clintons were themselves orchestrating the campaign against him, even if Hillary Clinton had spoken publicly against his nomination. But the main movers in the campaign against him included Clinton aides Ricki Seidman and Brian Fallon, who were ringmasters in the anti-Kavanaugh circus. And there were Clinton aides and campaign staff at all levels of the effort. That night Fallon would ominously tweet, “Kavanaugh will not serve for life.” In the months to come, he would organize efforts to impeach Kavanaugh, harass him with ethics complaints, and get him kicked off campuses.17
The hearing reconvened with Senator Leahy’s asking Kavanaugh if he wanted Mark Judge as a witness. Kavanaugh responded by criticizing how Ford’s allegation was sprung on him at the last minute. As the senator and the judge talked over each other, Leahy’s staff hoisted pictures from Kavanaugh’s yearbook onto an easel and started confronting him with its entries and interrupting his answers. The hostile exchange was going nowhere, and eventually Grassley cut Leahy off, reminding the Democrat how polite Republicans had been to Ford.
Mitchell then asked Kavanaugh about the summer of 1982 as well as his treatment of