Just wait til the subpoenas start flying

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When Brett Kavanaugh gave his jarring and deranged testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, he seemed particularly enraged that the investigations into his scandals had caused him so much personal inconvenience. He might want to get used to it. The best thing he could have done would have been to withdraw from the nomination and hope that, just maybe, he could slip out of public view and end up keeping his current job. But now that he’s insisted on pushing forward and being confirmed to the Supreme Court, he may quickly end up regretting it.

The numbers say that the Democrats are very likely to take control of the House in the November elections. Cable news spent the week citing a few outlier polls to try to create the narrative that the Kavanaugh battle has shifted momentum in favor of Republicans, but FiveThirtyEight responded with detailed analysis which showed that nothing had changed at all. In any case, the fate of the House and the Senate are largely in the hands of Resistance members, and how much time and effort they put in this next month. So what does this have to do with Kavanaugh’s fate? Everything.

There’s a reason the Republicans have been able to make such a mockery out of things like Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the farce of a Trump-Russia probe being run in the House Intelligence Committee: the Republicans control those committees. If the Democrats win the House, they’ll take control of every House committee.

You can bet that if the Democrats take control of the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing they’ll do is focus on unraveling Brett Kavanaugh. In fact Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, who would become the new committee chair, has strongly hinted as much in the past few days. Subpoenas will start flying. Witnesses will be brought in to testify against Kavanaugh, this time legitimately. There will be a real investigation – and it won’t stop until he’s made to answer for his crimes. If Kavanaugh thought his scandal-filled life was turned upside down this past month, it’s nothing compared to what he’ll face if the Democrats take the majority next month.