Senior congressional Democrats are attempting to quell a fresh push to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after a new sexual misconduct accusation surfaced over the weekend.
The New York Times on Saturday published a previously unreported allegation against Kavanaugh, whose nomination to the high court last year was rocked by several sexual misconduct allegations.
A Yale classmate, Max Stier, who now heads a Washington nonprofit, told Congress and the FBI that he had witnessed Kavanaugh “with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student,” the Times reported. The FBI did not investigate that allegation.
However, the paper updated the story later to say that “the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident.”
Nevertheless, the bombshell report outraged Democratic presidential candidates and members of congress, who plan to file a House resolution calling for an impeachment inquiry into Kavanaugh.
“Get real,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said of the appetite to impeach the conservative judge.
“We’ve got to get beyond this ‘impeachment is the answer to every problem.’ It’s not realistic,” Durbin said. “If that’s how we are identified in Congress, as the impeachment Congress, we run the risk that people will feel we’re ignoring the issues that mean a lot to them as families.”
“Mitch McConnell would block any impeachment. So that’s a moot point,” said Senator Patrick Leahy.
Besides, Democrats are “concentrating our resources on determining whether to impeach the president,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler. “It’s a consequential action, which we have to be able to justify.”
“I’m saying nothing on Kavanaugh,” Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said flatly.
Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also rejected the possibility of a Kavanaugh impeachment.
“No, I don’t,” she responded on whether impeaching the justice would be productive. “It’s not about impeaching him.”