Exposed: the coordinated plot to pin Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged attempted rape on some other guy
On Thursday, Ed Whelan, president of conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, posted a Twitter thread which suggested that the attempted rape of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford may have been committed by a classmate and doppelganger of Kavanaugh. Whelan showed a Zillow home listing and went step by step with the floor plan of the house and posted the name of the classmate who supposedly might have been the attacker. Ford quickly refuted the assertions by Whelan.
Whelan, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Supreme Court of the United States law clerk for the late Antonin Scalia, then issued a tweet suggesting he was just giving a possible scenario, but not making any factual assertions. Whelan withdrew the thread and apologized for having dragged the other guy into it by name, but the damage had been done.
It turns out that Whelan did not act alone, but used the PR firm, CRC Public Relations, to assist him in his postings and story, according to Politico. CRC is best known for its smear job against Swift Boat Veterans in 2004. But it also has a closer tie or two to the entire Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. According to the Huffington Post, within days of Kavanaugh’s nomination, CRC was sending out emails to political reporters, and coordinating a number of “glowing op-eds from left and right.” Judicial Crisis Network, which has spent millions in the past few years to make sure Merrick Garland got no hearing, that Neil Gorsuch was confirmed, and is now spending millions on an ad campaign you might have seen for Kavanaugh, directs all queries on its website to CRC. Finally, Kellyanne Conway last year sold her agency/business to CRC.
So, when people question if Brett Kavanaugh, the White House, perhaps Senate Judiciary Committee, and Ed Whelan engaged a coordinated campaign to push this angle, the answer would appear to be a resounding yes – at least to the extent that CRC is injected into every angle of this nomination process. One must ask how Dr. Ford, or the nation, can get a fair shake in this process, when millions are being spent to get Kavanaugh confirmed at whatever effort is needed.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.