As Republicans and their media swine continue their assault on the reputation and motives of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in coming forward with her account of attempted rape at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh, we're seeing a portrait of Kavanaugh as someone Republicans are desperate that you not see. Like these brushstrokes:
-- On Kavanaugh liking his female clerks to look "a certain way:"
A few years ago, as she was prepping to interview for a judicial clerkship, a student at Yale Law School received a troubling combination of warning and advice from her professors about one federal judge in particular: Brett Kavanaugh, she was told, liked his female clerks to have a “certain look.” [snip]
The professors proffering the advice are themselves well-known. Both Jed Rubenfeld and his wife, Amy Chua, author of the controversial 2011 book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, told this woman about Kavanaugh’s preferences. Then, Kavanaugh was simply known as a prestigious judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. [snip]
Her first inkling that there might be issues with Kavanaugh came from Rubenfeld in a conversation about various judges with whom she might work.
Rubenfeld took care to warn her about two judges in particular: First, Alex Kozinski, then a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was known to sexually harass his clerks, he told her. (Kozinski retired in December amid accusations of harassment.)
The other was Kavanaugh. Though the judge was known to hire female clerks who had a “certain look,” Rubenfeld told her, he emphasized that he had heard nothing else untoward.
“He did not say what the ‘certain look’ was. I did not ask,” the woman said. “It was very clear to me that he was talking about physical appearance, because it was phrased as a warning ― and because it came after the warning about Judge Kozinski.”The pairing with the disgraced Kozinski is particularly telling and chilling.
-- On Kavanaugh buddy, right- wing skunk and sexual assault witness Mark Judge, we hear from another Georgetown Prep alum, Eric Ruyak:
“For those of you who don’t know, I went to Georgetown Prep, where both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch went as well,” wrote Ruyak. “When I came forward with allegations regarding Gary Orr, a former priest, sexually assaulting me… Mark Judge (Kavanaugh’s friend in this who [sic] despicable story of sexual assault) reached out to alums saying that Gary Orr was a great priest and that I had obviously been corrupted by liberalism into a homosexual and therefore was most definitely lying.”
Years later, Orr admitted to raping many children and Georgetown Prep confessed to the incident in a letter to parents and students. [snip]
“So… for me to hear that this son of a bitch is involved in the allegations of Kavanaugh attempting to rape a girl in high school comes as no surprise to me,” said Ruyak. “It’s always the loudest most arrogant voices that are trying to hide the truth beneath the din of their own pompous voices.”
He went on to say that the story Dr. Christine Blasey Ford “is one that I know was repeated dozens of times in my 4 years at Prep.”Kavanaugh, who pushed for putting the most graphic, salacious details of the Clinton/ Lewinski affair in the Starr impeachment report, has been a (being charitable here) privileged jerk his entire adult life. What we're seeing play out with Dr. Blasey Ford coming forward and with other insights into the character of both Kavanaugh and his buddy and character witness Judge is a rotted out party rushing to put a rotted out person on the Supreme Court for the rest of his life.
May more come forward, as difficult, dangerous and heart- wrenching as it will be, to tell their stories about Kavanaugh before it's too late.
