The Daily Signal - #506: The True, Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Kavanaugh Confirmation

Episode Date: July 17, 2019

Today, we feature "Problematic Women" host Kelsey Bolar's interview with "Justice on Trial" authors Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino. They share how Christine Blasey Ford hid her liberal past, what life was really like for the Kavanaugh family during the hearings and how Brett Kavanaugh, who came out of Bush world, decided he was going to fight hard. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, July 18. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Justice Brett Kavanaugh is approaching one year on the Supreme Court, but his excruciating confirmation process has hardly faded from public memory. The left all-out war on Kavanaugh's personal character left the confirmation process in absolute tatters, leaving many to wonder if this is the new normal for conservative nominees. Molly Hemingway and Carrie Severino have authored a new book recounting the details of

what took place in front of cameras and behind closed doors based on dozens of exclusive interviews. Today, they appeared on the Problematic Women podcast with our colleague Kelsey Bowler, and today we'll bring you that interview. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating at iTunes. Now, on to our top news. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday brushed aside the idea that far-left-house progressives are becoming the face of her party.

Here's what she said in a press conference. The president is clearly trying to cast this broader debate as a choice between him and your more progressive members. This fight has now dominated the conversation this week. You've had your resolution. The Democrats are rallying behind these members. Are you concerned that the president is going? No. You know what, with all due respect, let's not waste our time on that.

We're talking about what we're going to do to help the American people. Our caucus is unified on all of that. Well, that came amid increased focus on what's become known as the squad, a group of House progressives comprised of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayana Presley. That group gave an explosive press conference earlier in the week, denouncing the president's tweets, which the House later condemned as racist. Well, amid all of that, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy shared his thoughts on the squad,

appearing on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. The simple fact of the matter is that the four congresswomen think that America was wicked in its origins. They think that America and its people are even more wicked now, that we are all racist and misogynistic and evil. Now, this is, they're entitled to their opinion, they're Americans, but I'm entitled to, to my opinion, and I just think their left-wing cranks, and they're the reason that they're in their directions on a shampoo bottle. I think we should ignore them. The senator went on to call them the four horsewomen of the apocalypse.

Well, according to a federal judge, Judge William H. Polly the third, the government has concluded its investigation into former Trump advisor Michael Cohen's payments to two women over alleged affairs with Trump. Jay Sekulow, one of Trump's lawyers, said, quote, we are pleased that the investigation surrounding these ridiculous campaign finance allegations is now closed. We have maintained from the outset that the president never engaged in any campaign finance violation. Well, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens passed away Tuesday night at the age of 99. Stevens was a leading liberal on the court and the longest serving justice in Supreme Court history, serving for nearly 35 years.

He was nominated by President Gerald Ford in 1975 and retired in 2010. Dr. Lianna Wen was appointed the head of Planned Parenthood just last fall, but she's already out amid clear tensions at the abortion giant. Reportedly, Wen wasn't seen as political or aggressive enough amid an era of pro-life victories. Quote, I came to Planned Parenthood to run a national health care organization and to advocate for the broad range of public health policies that affect our patient's health, when said in a statement, she added, the new board leadership has determined that the priority of Planned Parenthood moving forward

is to double down on abortion rights advocacy, end quote. And, well, when may just not have been woke enough? Quote, two sources told BuzzFeed News that when also refused to use trans-inclusive language, for example, saying people instead of women and telling staff that she believed talking about transgender issues would isolate people in the Midwest, BuzzFeed reported. Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, the Mexican drug lord, has been sentenced to life in prison. A federal judge in Brooklyn announced the sentence on Wednesday and ordered a $12.6 billion forfeiture, which prosecutor said was a conservative estimate of the proceeds of his criminal activity. The 62-year-old drug lord was convicted back in February of federal crimes that require a life sentence.

Prosecutors had called him ruthless and bloodthirsty in a court filing, saying, quote, the horrific nature and circumstances of the defendant's offense, his history and characteristics, and the fact that the defendant committed some of the most serious crimes under federal law, make a life sentence warranted. Next up, we'll feature Kelsey's interview with Molly Hemingway and Carrie Severino, authors of the new book, Justice on Trial. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America.

We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight for conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you. please join us at heritage.org. Molly and Carrie, thank you so much for making time to join the show today. We're happy to be here. It's great to be here.

I just had the privilege of attending your book launch at the Heritage Foundation. And after walking out, I noticed that there were chick-fil-a-s sandwiches. And I have to say, that is a sign that you have officially made it in this world when Heritage upgrades your sandwich options at your book event from the regular Heritage Sandwich sandwiches to Chick-fil-A. That's fantastic. I love it. And Chick-Flea is such a wonderful place that makes me cry

when I go there because everybody is so nice. I know, and you always hear those stories about employees helping others, like saving lives. I think an employee saved a kid's life who was choking the other day. Jumped out of the drive-thru window to save a life. I mean, that is the kind of service. That's what I'm saying. I've been there with kids and

they take such good care of my family, you know, just when you need someone to show you a bit of kindness. so I'm very grateful to them. All right. Well, we do have some important things to talk about today. So let's get to it. Your new book really reads like a novel because of all the details. I want to know how did you collect all these details in such a relatively short time since the confirmation?

Yeah, it was so exciting working on this book because both Molly and I knew this is like one of the most important things that happened last year. It was not just about, you know, is Brett Kavanaugh going to be confirmed? but justice really was on trial and we're looking at all these notions of due process and the rule of law. And we knew there were so many great stories that hadn't been fully explored. We knew we had great access. So we talked to over 100 different people from the president, the vice president, people in the White House working on this project. There were a lot of people in the Senate from dozens of senators and their staffers, many members of the Supreme Court, people who knew the Kavanaughes, people who knew Christine Blasey Ford. So we really spent the first part of this process just doing intensive amounts of interviewing because we needed to know what the story was.

And then, you know, at the end, it just had to be, it was a wild rush of trying to tell and not forget all the great storylines that we had learned in this process. Carrie and I began actually by reading a ton of history on Supreme Court nominations. She actually knew a lot of this already. She was a clerk on the Supreme Court for Clarence Thomas. She went to Harvard Law School. She had a bit of an advantage on that. but we spent a lot of time reading the history, seeing other books, then doing all these interviews and then figuring out how to put everything together. There was one day where we

interviewed a senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We met him while it was still dark out. It was that early in the morning. And then we ran from there to interview someone high level at the White House for several hours, went from there to interviewing a Supreme Court justice for several hours. So it wasn't just that we were interviewing people. Sometimes these interviews were lasting like five hours. I mean, just unbelievable. Multiple interviews going back with the same person because it was a really intense process.

I mean, sometimes you'd sit there for hours and you'd realize, oh my gosh, we're only to the end of August. Right. And you got to get through October or so. It was a lot of. Right. Or you talk to other people and you realize, I have more questions for that person

than I didn't get through. But it was exhilarating. And then Molly, most of these interviews were conducted on background, which not all of our listeners might not know what that means. So first off, can you talk about that decision to publish this book with on background interviews and how you thought through that decision

as one of the nation's most prominent media critics? Well, I am happy to deal with sources who need to be on background or anonymous. I think the question is what you're willing to do with that information. So in our case, we did have access to people who were not in a practice of speaking with journalists, who for them, the only condition upon which they gave us this access

was that we would not identify them. The fact that they spoke with us didn't mean that we just ran with it, though. We would take their stories. Then we would also make sure that we checked it with other people who were witnesses or privy to that same information. So we wanted to just write the definitive account. And that doesn't mean just going with what one person says. But when they say that's how a conversation went down, you talk to the other person who was in the conversation or other people that were in the conversation or people that those people spoke to or you look for corroborating evidence. There were times when we actually did not use information that we got.

And sometimes it was just, you know, sometimes it was the most exciting stuff. So we did speak with a lot of people who knew Christine Blasey Ford. We had unbelievable stories, just very salacious stories. And I would have loved to have put them in the book. And I think Carrie would have too. We felt because of the nature of those stories, they needed to be on the record. And people were understandably scared to do that. They would say, I have a kid going to college.

I don't want to be out here and have the media destroy me while my kids trying to get into college or, you know, I live in this community. So we thought, well, if that's their decision, that's fine, but we're not going to put those stories in there. So you just have to make a decision about how to handle each piece of information. And on that note, media bias was a major and consistent theme throughout the book in the confirmation process. The press certainly didn't hold back in investigating Kavanaugh's past, but hardly made any attempt to dig up inconsistencies regarding Christine Blazy Ford's past. or inconsistencies.

In our stories, in one case, which you really walk through in the book, well for readers who didn't follow that closely, the Washington Post actually covered up some of these inconsistencies. So looking back, how one-sided was the coverage, and what were some of the major details that you think the press really had an obligation and an ability to dig up at the time, but either turned a blind eye or proactively covered up? I think the big problems with media coverage of this were the overarching problems, the narrative push. They'd sort of decided early on that they were hostile to Brett Kavanaugh, in the same way that they have decided early on that they're pretty much hostile to anything that's coming out of the Trump administration. And that colored all of their editorial choices from that point forward.

Sometimes that was displayed in what they were elevating and what they were not elevating. there is no question that everything, no matter how small or tangential that was in the high school yearbook of Brett Kavanaugh was considered fair game. Allegations that were not well-sourced were considered fair to publish in nationwide magazines. And you weren't seeing the similar level of scrutiny or really any scrutiny of accusers. And there is an example, too, of NBC News knew that, well, to back up, Michael Avanotti put forth a claim of, serial gang rape perpetrated by Brett Kavanaugh. And he said he had a witness. She had a sworn affidavit.

And he said he had a second witness. NBC News actually knew that that supposed second witness was denying what his claims were. They sat on that until after he was confirmed, until weeks after he was confirmed, even though they had it before the confirmation vote. This is not appropriate journalistic behavior. What's unfortunate is we didn't see much of a reckoning with the poor decisions that were made. people were giving themselves awards for how they handled this coverage, even though by any

objective standard, they fell down on the job. Carrie, I know you both cite a couple examples that you did feel comfortable publishing about Ford that were previously unknown to the public. Is there one or two examples that stand out to you that you can share with our listeners? Yeah, I mean, one thing that we heard repeatedly from the people who knew her at the time, and many of whom were and continue to be friends of hers, were that the image that was being portrayed was of someone who, you know, she was saying, well, I went to this party, I only had one beer. We learned that she actually was a very heavy drinker.

This is what everyone is reporting, right? They're saying that she was a heavy drinker at the time. They were saying that she was actually very aggressive with boys at the time. So all of this is at odds at the public image, as well as, you know, she was being portrayed as someone who was, you know, marginally political, if political at all. that was significant because we also spoke to people familiar with her social media presence before it was scrubbed. Because, of course, before her story came out, all of that was scrubbed from the Internet, not even just right in September when it happened, but actually earlier than that. And so we learned that, in fact, on Facebook, one person described her as crazy liberal.

She's, you know, we all know the kind of people who have the wild Facebook feeds on either extreme. That's the kind of person that she was. So people who were saying, well, she's not even political. she could have no possible motive here to not want Kavanaugh on the court. Well, that's really belied by the information that's out there. And it was information that was intentionally kept quiet and hidden. And it's something that unfortunately not enough people dug to find out whether that was true or not. Or they just kind of accepted the claims of, no, no, she's not political at all and just went with that.

Right. She pretty clearly scrubbed her social media accounts. And as a journalist, no matter what side you're on, that should be a pretty glaring red flag. But, well, there might have been legitimate reasons. You know, you can understand that someone would say, oh, I was about to go public with a pretty big story. I didn't want people going through my records. There's a reasonable approach to it, but to not mention it, to not address the issue,

or even to not address the fact that that explanation would be at odds with her own claims of not wanting her name to be public. You know, there are things that we have from her letter. She didn't want to be public. We also know that she called the Washington Post tip line, which is not normally something you do when you're trying to keep information from getting out publicly. Well, speaking of one of the more salacious allegations, Michael Avinati, who represented Kavanaugh-cueser, Julie Swetnik, who also, by the way, has been arrested in New York

on federal fraud, embezzlement and extortion charges, is disputing some of the details in the book about his client and actually invited you both on national TV to talk about it. He tweeted at Molly and your co-author saying you have, quote, fabricated a number of facts for your recent book relating to Kavanaugh, including relating to Ms. Swetnik. I am calling her on it. Molly, pick any network, even your beloved Fox, and let's discuss what really happened. Time to step up. Are you going to take them up on this offer? I got a note from someone that said, how much are you paying Michael Avanotti to promote your book?

I think that is a surreal moment. We were kind of enjoying that. It is interesting to note that Michael Avanotti went on MSNBC and CNN. I think it was like 250 times last year. He was a welcome guest by these networks who were happy to hear whatever he had to say. Carrie and I have a book that is topping the bestseller lists on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. it is doing incredibly well. It breaks news. It is an inside look at an institution that very few people get an inside look at. And we have not been welcomed by MSNBC and CNN. So I think it's funny that he wants to get back on those networks. But I do not think he rises to the level of who we want to be discussing with. Would you say that the sorts of dubious allegations big picture damage the Me Too movement?

Oh, absolutely. And that's one of the frustrations of this whole process. And it was kind of going on the coattails of movement that was making some important and serious points about men who are in positions of power abusing their roles. But when you have allegations like this, which were, first of all, not even in that same category. This is talking about something between two high schoolers. but more importantly, one that had no cooperation, no support. And in fact, a lot of all the evidence we have come to find out afterwards has cast doubt on the allegations. That actually brings all of the rest of the Me Too movement kind of down with it.

I think a lot of people who got caught on a bandwagon and just started saying, oh, you know, believe all women. No, believe women who actually have claims that are backed up by facts because it's important to, not allow a crying wolf phenomenon to distract us from the really serious problems that need to be dealt with in our society. Right. And then we saw, you know, one allegation with no cooperation led to the snowball effect of these other allegations. Yeah. Increasingly bizarre and some of them just crazy on their face. And many of which people admitted almost as soon as they made the allegations that they were false. So, I mean, this are people who are admitted liars to the committee. That is not going to be good for anyone, least of all, women who are victims of sexual assault. And there's many reasons to actually go pick up this book, Justice, on trial, and read it for yourself.

But I think if you are interested in the Me Too movement, it is really important to understand the context of this because we're not just talking about the allegations that you mostly heard about. in the mainstream media. There were other ones brought forward that didn't even fully make it to the media that you all discussed being brought to the committees. Exactly. Just the general climate. You know, it's called justice on trial because it's not just about justice Brett Kavanaugh being on trial, but the very notion of justice, of due process, of rule of law, of presumption of innocence. And I think that's what really gripped the country last year and probably why it's having such reaction, why the book is having such reaction is it is terrifying to see people and institutions that should know better, casting that principle of innocence being a presumption,

that when you make an allegation, that it does need to be treated respectfully, and it needs to have corroborating evidence in order to be taken seriously and to make a case, an allegation is not sufficient for conviction. And it was so disappointing to see people who should know better, not holding to that, what should be a common value among all Americans. Justice on trial talks about a number of key Republicans who were pivotal in pushing forward Kavanaugh's nomination. This clip from Senator Lindsey Graham that we'll listen to is one of them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics.

And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. Are you a gang rapist? No. I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through. Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. That you knew about it and you held it.

You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford. None. She's as much of a victim as you are. God, I hate to say it, because these have been my friends. But let me tell you when it comes to this. You're looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend. Do you consider this a job? So there were a number of breakout, memorable soundbites from this confirmation process.

That one really comes to mind and also just the general fact that we had President Trump, who did not buckle under pressure to withdraw Kavanaugh's nomination. Do you think this was a unique political environment and would this happen again? What can we learn from this moment? They think that was a very powerful moment because it showed the frustration amongst the Republican senators with the game playing and the politicization here. And I think also because he spoke for a lot of Americans in that moment of people who, and he's right, the American people do not want to see those games played. Our concern is that many of those same people have not yet been held accountable. And we want to make sure that if we want to make sure this doesn't happen again, we need to make sure that people don't view this as a successful technique.

Now, we know they weren't able to block Kavanaugh's confirmation with this means. And that's, that is a good thing. It's wonderful that Kavanaugh was strong through the process, that President Trump stuck with him because a lot of people we talked to, you know, they speculated, not every Republican president would have stood by a nominee under these kind of circumstances. President Trump did consistently throughout, even when some people around him were suggesting otherwise. And a few key senators, Senator Grassley, Senator McConnell were absolutely steadfast. What is, you know, perhaps troubling is that not every Republican senator was so steadfast. We go through some of those tales in injustice on trial. Going forward, I do think it's incumbent upon people to understand the need to fight. This is one of the themes we look at in the book is how now Justice Kavanaugh is getting different advice about how to handle the smearing of his reputation. And some, I guess, you know, my, I might call him like old school Republicans are telling him to just emphasize his wonderful treatment of women over the years and talk about the courage and bravery of Blasey Ford and just to be nice and deferential and to keep those values at high. And other people are saying, are you know, are you kidding? They're trying to destroy you as a person.

You have to fight for your name and honor and reputation. And that struggle that he goes through where he's transitioning from his, he was, you know, a long time Bush White House employees. He was nominated by President Bush for his federal court that he served on for 12 years. His close family friends with the Bush family and his evolution from that way of being into understanding that they're coming to destroy everything he holds dear and that he needs to fight for it is a similar evolution to what I think many people in the country have gone through in recent years. So I sped through this book and I think less than a week. And I have to say coming from the perspective of someone who only covered it as a conservative journalist and really, just as a public bystandard, it was kind of traumatizing to relive it. I want to know what it was like for both of you to pour your hearts and souls into this book

for months and then now be reliving it. Yeah, going through many of those interviews, it was like having to relive it sometimes multiple times in a day as much. And you go through this drama with each person. You know, they were over and over and over. And the people we interview are going, I think some of them thought both it kind of was sparking PTSD after the crazy experience they went through. But also it was almost like therapy.

They're kind of talking through all of those emotions. So it was really actually challenging emotionally on those levels. I don't know if we talked about this, Carrie, but when we were reading the audiobook, there were parts where I was reading where I was getting emotional. And I'm thinking, okay, we wrote this. Like, we went through this. Like, why is it still affecting me after going through it dozens or hundreds of times? Why was it ultimately worth it to go through all this? Well, coming from my perspective as someone who clerked for Justice Thomas, I feel like what we're seeing here is just a repeat of many things we saw in his confirmation process, not just the attempts to defeat him and the use of unverified allegations to do so, et cetera.

But, you know, when Thomas was confirmed, two to one Americans believed him over Anita Hill. Black, white, men, women. The people who watched and lived through those hearings believed Justice Thomas. Thomas, but they weren't content to just pack up and go home after kind of being defeated and Thomas was confirmed and he's in the court for life. The other side then instituted a campaign to discredit everything that he did in the court. In doing so, they tried to continue to smear his name. I think if you took that survey today, you would see that many Americans either weren't paying attention have forgotten or many, you know, many people who weren't around and old enough to appreciate what happened to him. We wanted to make sure that we got ahead of the revision

history in this case and told a very thorough and accurate account of what really happened. So that campaign of discrediting a justice can't happen again and so that people understand what to expect the next time. Because, you know, this is what happened when we replaced a swing vote on the court with a conservative nominee by President Trump. What happens if President Trump gets to appoint a nominee to replace a liberal justice who might retire? That, I think, could frighteningly be even worse. And we need Americans to have their eyes wide open now. to know what they're getting into in the hopes that we can prevent it from happening to another person. Right. And Molly, just from a journalism perspective, given the horrific coverage of this confirmation

process, how important was it to set the record straight in this book? It wasn't just about setting the record straight, although obviously that was important. And on that note, that is something that really motivated me during the confirmation battle. I became privy to some stories showing just really bad behavior. and thoughtless and cruel behavior by some reporters to cause problems between friends, between Kavanaugh friends, that just seemed, again, more cruel than the normal things you're dealing with of journalistic, bad behavior. But it's about setting the record straight, but also just as a journalist, I knew we had a good story.

We both, Carrie and I both went through it. We knew some of the stories. We knew we had good stories. We knew it would just be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to talk about something exciting that also enabled us to talk about deeper and more important issues. And you just can't pass up an opportunity like that. So I'm so glad that we team together to do it. What lessons should we be taking away for the conservative movement specifically when it comes to the nomination of the next Supreme Court justice? Well, one of the main things, we've learned something from every nomination

battle, I hope, especially the ones that have been hard, like the Bork or the Thomas battle. We've learned to make sure we have people with solid judicial philosophies, not to appoint people with a blank slate, kind of record, they have an actual solid record. We learned to appoint people who have courage and are willing to stand by their difficult decisions on the court so they aren't going to flinch in the face of public pressure. And then from this nomination, I think we really learned that you have to be ready for anything and that you have to stand up and fight and can't just hope that the truth will just become obvious in and of itself. You have to make sure that you are out there fighting sometimes against a public information campaign coming from the other side that's not

always going to be playing fair. I think there is a naivete that we've seen on the right sometimes, and sometimes unfortunately, from the rights leaders, of thinking that the political situation has not broken down as significantly as it has. And the Kavanaugh confirmation battle should have been a wake-up call about how seriously progressive left is taking the battle for institutions and what lengths they will go to to control those institutions. And that we hope that as Americans, we never lose, our good virtues and our civility and whatnot, but we need to also just be aware of the seriousness of the fight and how it requires thinking very smartly,

strategically about how to combat. Well, that's going to do it for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a rating to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow.

The Daily Signal podcast is executive producer, by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Lauren Evans and Thalia Ramprasad. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.