How to Tell the Kavanaugh War Is Over

Swearing-in Ceremony for Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Oval. Rose Garden.

There were many clues, writes Francis Menton in the Manhattan Contrarian. The really easy clue was from the New York Times, but there were others.

1. The Emergence of Two More Accursers: Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick.

Could these two transparent frauds have been better selected if the only purpose was to undermine the potential credibility of the only potentially credible accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? I mean, in case you might have been inclined to give an apparently damaged woman (Ford) the benefit of the doubt, and in case you might have thought it unlikely that there could be anyone out there so malicious and so overcome with hatred and anger for all things Republican that they would make up completely fake stories about old sexual assaults, now you know.

2. When Dr. Ford’s story started to spring a new leak every few hours.

She can’t come to Washington to testify because of her fear of flying? Not really. She built a second door to her house as an escape route because of anxiety stemming from the assault? Not so much. She never used her expertise to help a friend prepare for a polygraph test? Just kidding. Notes from therapy sessions are privileged when Republicans ask for them, but have previously been turned over to Democratic staff and to the Washington Post? How does that work? Since sharing the notes with the Post unquestionably waives any privilege, you can be forgiven for concluding that the refusal to let doubters see them can only mean that they would reveal major discrepancies in the story.

3. When leading Democratic Senators started walking away from the Ford story and advanced newly-created reasons to oppose the nomination.

Bernie Sanders wants Kavanaugh investigated for perjury (for admitting to underage beer drinking, but not to enough underage beer drinking).

Diane Feinstein now thinks the real reason not to confirm Kavanaugh is that he lacks “judicial temperament” because he got angry about the accusations against him.

You’d have been on the money choosing any of these answers. The big winner, however, is what you do not read on the front-page print edition of Thursday’s NYT. What’s there? Not a single word about the Kavanaugh confirmation. “It’s completely gone,” writes Mr. Menton. “We’ve moved on!” Moved on?

… a brand new attack on Trump. It’s splayed across all six columns of the top of the front page (four columns of pictures and two of text) — and then across all of pages A10, A11, A12, A13, A14, A15, A16 and A17. Wow! I have been getting Pravda for a good forty years and I can’t recall any single piece ever remotely approaching this one in length. (Sure, they have devoted that much space to one event, like maybe the World Trade Center attacks; but that would consist of many separate articles. This one is all one article.)

Clearly they have been working on this for months. Why publish today, with the Kavanaugh confirmation vote just a few days away at most, and this being your last chance to finally come up with the magic McGuffin to stop him? Now you understand. The magic McGuffin doesn’t exist. The Kavanaugh war is over.

As the Manhattan Contrarian points out, “A gift tax return for a $41 million gift of real estate based entirely on an appraisal has a 100% chance of being audited by the IRS. It also would show up accompanied by a check in excess of $20 million. This is not something that just slips by them.”

“With 100% certainty, the IRS looked at this and signed off,” writes Mr. Menton.