The Kavanaugh Confirmation and What Was Ignored.

← all posts

Let's be clear about the sequence of events, because the speed of the news cycle allowed important facts to get buried. Christine Blasey Ford did not come forward recklessly or anonymously. She sent a confidential letter to her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, in July 2018 — before Kavanaugh was even announced as the nominee — asking that it be kept private while she decided whether to come forward. The letter was passed to Senator Feinstein. It was leaked — not by Ford — in September, forcing her hand. She chose to testify publicly rather than let her account be reduced to an anonymous document with no context.

Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018. She named the location, the approximate time, and the people present. She described the assault in specific detail. She said she was "100 percent" certain it was Kavanaugh. She was a research psychologist who understood memory and trauma, and she explained under oath how fear encodes in the brain — why she could be certain of who, while less certain of minor peripheral details. She was calm, precise, and consistent under hours of questioning by a prosecutor the committee had brought in specifically to cross-examine her.

Kavanaugh's Testimony.

Kavanaugh's testimony the same day was notable not for what it proved but for how it was delivered. He was visibly angry throughout. He interrupted Democratic senators. He made explicitly partisan statements — blaming the allegations on "the Clintons" and warning of "what goes around comes around." He lectured Senator Amy Klobuchar after she asked whether he had ever blacked out from drinking, then apologized to her during a break. Dozens of former federal law clerks, legal scholars, and sitting judges signed letters raising concerns about whether his conduct was consistent with the judicial temperament required for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

His denials were sweeping and categorical. He denied ever drinking to the point of memory loss. He denied the assault entirely. Multiple people who knew him at Yale — including classmates — publicly disputed his characterization of his drinking. Former classmate Deborah Ramirez alleged Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a Yale dorm party. A third woman, Julie Swetnick, made additional allegations. Kavanaugh denied everything. His Yale roommate, James Roche, released a statement saying Kavanaugh was "frequently drunk" and that his description of himself as primarily focused on academics "is not the Brett I knew."

The FBI Investigation That Wasn't.

After Senator Jeff Flake was confronted by sexual assault survivors in a Senate elevator and said he would only vote yes if the FBI investigated, the White House agreed to a supplemental background investigation. What followed was one of the most deliberately constrained investigations in recent FBI history. The White House controlled the scope entirely — the FBI was only permitted to contact a specific list of people provided by the White House counsel's office. That list did not include Christine Blasey Ford. It did not include Brett Kavanaugh. It did not include Mark Judge — the person Ford specifically named as being in the room. It did not include Ramirez's Yale classmates who contacted the FBI and wanted to speak to investigators.

The FBI received more than 4,500 tips through its public tip line during the one-week investigation. According to senators who reviewed the results, those tips were not investigated — they were bundled and sent to the White House. In 2022, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed in writing to Senators Whitehouse and Coons that the bureau had received over 4,500 tips and forwarded them to the White House, where they remained. None were investigated. The entire exercise was structured to take up time without generating findings.

The Long-Term Consequences.

Kavanaugh joined the Court and four years later was part of the five-justice majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. That decision eliminated the constitutional right to abortion that American women had held for nearly fifty years, triggering immediate abortion bans in multiple states. Kavanaugh's confirmation — paired with the stolen Merrick Garland seat and Amy Coney Barrett's rushed confirmation eight days before the 2020 election — gave conservatives a 6-3 supermajority on the Court that is now reshaping American law for a generation.

As for Christine Blasey Ford: she received death threats. She and her family were forced to leave their home and move multiple times. She hired private security. She lost her position at her university for a period. She has said she still cannot return to her home. She did all of this to testify under oath before the United States Senate about what she experienced. The Senate confirmed the man she accused anyway, after an investigation specifically designed to find nothing.

None of that constitutes a legal verdict on Kavanaugh. A confirmation hearing is not a trial. But it is a judgment call — a question of whether this particular person should hold this particular lifetime position. The Senate answered yes. Millions of people are living with the consequences of that answer every day.