choices for our own reason. I’m struggling, sorry.”3
A group of reporters camped outside of Flake’s office met some female protesters who were there to lobby him against Kavanaugh. They all learned about his decision at the same time and gasped. The protesters cried. A few minutes later, when the senator left his office for the Judiciary Committee meeting, they ran after him. Ana Maria Archila, a professional activist with the Center for Popular Democracy (funded by the Arabella Advisors Network), and Maria Gallagher, a member of the liberal feminist group UltraViolet who was in Washington to protest against Kavanaugh, trapped Flake and an aide in an elevator.4 CNN’s cameras were rolling.
“I was sexually assaulted, and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter,” cried Gallagher. “Look at me when I’m talking to you. You’re telling me that my assault doesn’t matter.”5 Archila shrieked, “You’re allowing someone who is unwilling to take responsibility for his own actions, and willing to hurl the harm that he has done to one woman—actually, three women,” indicating that even Ramirez and Swetnick must be believed.6 The exchange lasted for five long minutes, after which emotional CNN correspondents praised the activists uncritically.7
Following Thursday’s hearing, Senator Collins told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she would find it difficult to vote for Kavanaugh without a sworn statement directly from Mark Judge, not just the attestation of his lawyer. Just before midnight, the committee had released just that, and Grassley read it at the Friday morning committee meeting. Judge said he had no memory of what Ford alleged and added, “I am knowingly submitting this letter under penalty of felony.”8
Democratic senators and the media were now asserting that the American Bar Association had backed away from its earlier endorsement of Kavanaugh as “well qualified.” The truth was rather more complicated. On Thursday, Robert Carlson, the president of the ABA and a donor to Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns, had sent the committee a letter asking it to postpone the vote on Kavanaugh until an FBI investigation was completed. The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which evaluates judicial nominees, sent its own letter to the Judiciary Committee the next day, clarifying that (1) it had not seen Carlson’s letter before it was sent, (2) the standing committee “acts independently of ABA leadership,” and (3) it “conducts non-partisan, non-ideological, and confidential peer review of federal judicial nominees.” The letter concluded, “The ABA’s rating for Judge Kavanaugh is not affected by Mr. Carlson’s letter.”9 By the time the clarification was received, however, the narrative was set. A story by CNN’s Manu Raju, for example, published five days later, presented Carlson’s letter as an act of the ABA itself and made no mention of the standing committee’s letter of correction, leaving the impression that Kavanaugh’s original “well qualified” rating was now in question.10
The American Civil Liberties Union also took part in the campaign against Kavanaugh, despite its ostensible policy against weighing in on Supreme Court nominations—a policy it had also broken to oppose Rehnquist, Bork, and Alito. Having strayed in recent years under the influence of progressive donors from its formerly zealous advocacy of free speech and religious freedom, the organization now abandoned two of its other core principles: the presumption of innocence and opposition to guilt by association.
At the Friday morning Judiciary Committee meeting, the motion to vote later that day was carried, but Senators Booker and Harris refused to respond to the roll call. Without explaining their objection, they walked out in protest, joined by Blumenthal, as Feinstein began complaining about Kavanaugh’s temperament. While the ranking member took issue with the nominee’s “belligerent” response to her invocation of the serial gang rape charge, her fugitive colleagues conducted a thirty-minute press conference with a group of reporters who had been waiting for them outside. As the trio left the hearing room for the press conference, Senator Harris was heard lamenting that the Republicans were beating the Democrats, liberally punctuating her complaint with f-bombs.
Grassley, meanwhile, informed the committee about various efforts to contact the last-minute accusers and noted that the attorneys for Deborah Ramirez were still refusing to communicate with the committee. He then reminded his colleagues that Ford, oddly enough, had testified that she had been unaware that the committee was willing to interview her in California, suggesting that her attorneys were not on the up-and-up. “This has never been about the truth,” Lindsey Graham observed. “This has been about delay and destruction.