Sen. Grassley is now reporting in a new statement that ranking member Sen. Feinstein is refusing to help investigate the sexual accuser claims that she put forward last week:
“Anyone who comes forward as Dr. Ford has deserves to be heard, so I will continue working on a way to hear her out in an appropriate, precedented and respectful manner.
“The standard procedure for updates to any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties. In this case, that would entail phone calls with at least Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. Consistent with that practice, I asked Senator Feinstein’s office yesterday to join me in scheduling these follow-ups. Thus far, they have refused. But as a necessary step in evaluating these claims, I’ll continue working to set them up.
“Unfortunately, committee Republicans have only known this person’s identity from news reports for less than 24 hours and known about her allegations for less than a week. Senator Feinstein, on the other hand, has had this information for many weeks and deprived her colleagues of the information necessary to do our jobs. The Minority withheld even the anonymous allegations for six weeks, only to later decide that they were serious enough to investigate on the eve of the committee vote, after the vetting process had been completed.
“It’s deeply disturbing that the existence of these allegations were leaked in a way that seemed to preclude Dr. Ford’s confidentiality.
This is INSANE. If you are going to drop these allegations, you must make the accuser available for questioning. https://t.co/osNlKeaoxR
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 17, 2018
How could she be refusing to help make the accuser available for these follow-up calls? That doesn’t even make sense considering she wanted the accusations out there – unless she knows they are bogus and doesn’t want this to sully her anymore than it already has.
Grassley also adds this at the end which I want to highlight:
“Over my nearly four decades in the Senate I have worked diligently to protect whistleblowers and get to the bottom of any issue. Dr. Ford’s attorney could have approached my office, while keeping her client confidential and anonymous, so that these allegations could be thoroughly investigated. Nevertheless, we are working diligently to get to the bottom of these claims.”
That’s a great point. At any time during this process Ford’s lawyer could have reported these claims to the actual chairman so that they could have been thoroughly investigated. But neither she nor the Democrats came forward with this information, which makes it look like they were scheming together to kill Kavanaugh’s nomination.
You know the old saying: If it walks like a duck, smells like a duck and craps like a duck…..then it will die like a duck when you shoot it and put it in the freezer for a duck Thanksgiving.
Ok maybe I made that last part up. But you get the point.