At Politico, Nolan McCaskill reports that “Democrats launched a simultaneous attack against Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday, casting the president as a ‘co-conspirator’ whose Supreme Court nominee has been tainted.” For The Washington Post, John Wagner and Mike DeBonis report that “Senate Democrats … called for delaying confirmation hearings for … Kavanaugh in the wake of a guilty plea by Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former attorney, on campaign-finance counts that involve the president.” Additional coverage comes from Lauren Fox and Phil Mattingly at CNN and Byron Tau for The Wall Street Journal. At The Hill Jordain Carney reports that “Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is breaking with calls from party leadership to delay … [the] hearings.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal describes the claim that “Brett Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed for the Supreme Court because Michael Cohen copped a guilty plea” as a “double bank shot” and calls Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “daily histrionics” “embarrassing.” At Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Damon Root observes that “[i]f the history of modern judicial confirmation proceedings is any guide, then yes, the Senate really is going to confirm Kavanaugh amidst all this.” Jed Shugera asserts at Slate that “in the wake of Tuesday’s news, if the Senate confirms a second Trump nominee to the Supreme Court, it will be fundamentally and inexorably undermining the court’s legitimacy.” At Crime and Consequences, Kent Scheidegger maintains that “[t]he present political scandal is no reason at all to leave the Supreme Court short-handed.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal dismisses Schumer’s characterization of Kavanaugh’s recent assurance to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine that Roe v. Wade is “settled law” as “lip service,” pointing out that “it’s no small matter for a judicial nominee to make such a forthright statement to a Senator, especially on such a politically combustible issue as abortion.” At Rewire.News, Katelyn Burns writes that “[i]n a lot of ways, the fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination represents a critical juncture in Collins’ political career, and her vote on this nomination could be fateful for her 2020 re-election campaign.”
For The Washington Post, Tom Hamburger and others report that “Senate Democrats are exploring whether Kavanaugh crossed a line in his private communications with outsiders and revealed grand-jury testimony related to [Clinton aide Vince] Foster’s suicide or other matters then under scrutiny in [independent counsel Kenneth] Starr’s wide-ranging investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
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