This is all due, of course, to the late breaking release of information by Ms. Ford, who claims that she was assaulted at a high school party by Kavanaugh when they were both of high school age (assault doesn't have to mean sexual assault for purposes of a discussion such as this). He denies it. Mark Judge was a third party she alleged to have been in the room and more or less part of the assault, but he denies recalling that.
In the current atmosphere, of course, a mere accusation is enough to derail a nomination and there is, therefore, sufficient reason to be suspicious of such claims for that reason. In this case, the information was apparently transmitted to Diane Feinstein weeks ago who sat on it until after the first round of hearings, which is really odd.
To compound the oddity, there were demands by Democrats that a vote on the nomination be delayed until the matter could be looked into, not a wholly unreasonable request but one that at the same time inevitably smacks of being a political calculation. A delay would effectively push things back for weeks and maybe bast the current Senatorial term. Republicans naturally rejected that, but in response they agreed to hear from the accuser and the accused in a session this week, which his a pretty reasonable reply.
Up until now the accuser appeared to be quite credible in and of herself, just as the accused does (and hence the problem of what to do), but faced with the option of appearing and testifying she elected not to and declared she would not until the FBI investigated the matter.
Now, this may play well in the general population, or some sections of it, but the FBI doesn't investigate crimes like this at all. I guess the FBI may investigate the backgrounds of Supreme Court nominees, that makes sense to me, but the claims that she made are in the nature of a state matter. So if you went to the authorities wit them, you'd go to your local police. It's pretty obvious, of course, that most local police are not going to be thrilled investigating a matter like this decades after it has alleged to have occurred, but some will. Indeed, in recent years quite a few have been willing to do so.
Be that as it may, investigating this type of scenario so many years later is almost a lost cause. A hearing in the Senate committee actually makes more sense as it gives the Senators the chance to weigh the credibility of the witnesses and at least some Republican Senators indicated they would in fact be willing to do just that. Be that as it may, only Kavanaugh's supporters stepped forward. That places the credibility of the accuser back on trial, more or less, simply because refusing to support your story in testimony indicates a certain lack of credibility.
Since that time, a classmate of the accuser apparently tweeted, the most dreaded form of communication, that she recalled hearing about the incident at their school where she claimed it was a topic of conversation for weeks thereafter. One other supporter of the accuser has said she doesn't recall any conversations about it and the accuser herself says she didn't tell anyone about it (which wouldn't have meant that information might not have gotten out somehow). If it was a hot topic, as the Tweeter stated, you'd have think others would recall it, but instead the Tweeter has indicated she will not give interviews and she took her tweet down, which suggests a certain lack of credibility as to the tweet.
The Huffington Post, which I can't stand, actually came up with a good idea, amazingly, in regards to all of this, which is to subpoena Mark Young in to testify. They can do that and they should. Going beyond that, they also ought to subpoena in Ms. Ford to testify at this point. She's gone public with her comments and therefore should be willing to present testimony about them in this fashion, FBI investigation or no. For that matter, quite frankly, Diane Feinstein ought to be sworn in so that the circumstances of her acquiring, and then withholding, information can be learned.
But none of that will occur.
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