Posted on 10/07/2018 7:53:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The only thing that’ll make the Kavanaugh saga sweeter for righties at this point is watching their least favorite lawyer get the Billy Batts treatment from his Democratic frenemies. He’s spent the past six months telling them to go get their shinebox. They were destined to stomp him as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
“Well you know at some point there were a lot of folks coming forward making all sorts of accusations,” said Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, when asked about the allegations raised by Avenatti and his client. “It turns it into a circus atmosphere and certainly that’s not where we should be.”…
“Democrats and the country would have been better off if Mr. Avenatti spent his time on his Iowa vanity project rather than meddling in Supreme Court fights,” a senior Senate Democratic aide fumed, referring to Avenatti toying with the idea of seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. “His involvement set us back, absolutely.”
A Democratic senator, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly, said: “Not helpful at all. I think Susan was always yes, but Avenatti was a useful foil.”…
“It wasn’t helpful because the story became about Avenatti,” [a] Democratic senator [on the Judiciary Committee] said.
“One Republican congressional official called Mr. Avenatti’s involvement ‘manna from heaven,'” noted the Times in a story today. “From the other side, a Democratic congressional official called it ‘massively unhelpful.'” His enemies outside Congress are windmill-dunking on him too:
Kavanaugh owes an enormous debt to @MichaelAvenatti , who may have turned the tide in his favor by diluting Ford’s compelling accusation with an implausible story.
— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) October 7, 2018
“I think a lot of people, including many of my Democratic colleagues, felt like we had gotten into the foothills of preposterous” when Avenatti came forward with Swetnick’s gang-rape claims, said Republican John Kennedy on “Meet the Press.” Avenatti himself was defiant and indignant (always on-brand!) at the idea that he wrecked Democrats’ chances of borking the nominee so he doubled down this morning with a new statement. It’s nominally from Swetnick but written in fluent Avenatti-ese:
Below please find a statement from my client Julie Swetnick regarding the Kavanaugh nomination. I urge you to read it. pic.twitter.com/kBHL7cm8Pi
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) October 7, 2018
That’s the second post from the top at his Twitter account as I write this, by the way. The top post, which has been pinned there for weeks, is a statement of his policy positions ahead of his 2020 run. Ahem.
To be fair, his Democratic enemies’ motives in knifing him aren’t entirely pure. They’re annoyed that he hurt them on Kavanaugh but they’re also worried about him pulling a Trump in the 2020 primaries. His core appeal to liberals is that he alone among would-be nominees, supposedly, is both smart enough and ruthless enough to outmaneuver Trump; the progress of Stormygate, with Michael Cohen ultimately pleading guilty in federal court and implicating Trump in campaign finance violations, is the alleged proof. By pinning the Kavanaugh failure on him, Democrats are trying to drive home to his fans that not only is he not some master strategist, he just handed Trump one of the biggest political victories POTUS will ever have. If that perception catches on, that he got called for a dumb penalty as Dems were driving for the winning touchdown, it’ll smash whatever mystique he presently enjoys among lefties as some unbeatable political athlete.
The irony of the Avenatti/Swetnick matter is that a guy who’s omnipresent in media was done in by media. He makes a fair-ish point in the statement about Susan Collins and others ruling out Swetnick’s allegations as zany despite the fact that the FBI never interviewed her or looked into them. But the media, which was highly motivated for ideological reasons to substantiate Swetnick’s claims, did look into them. They found nothing. Swetnick’s interview with NBC did more to damage her credibility than to enhance it. Republicans and Democrats each operated on the assumption, I think, that if Avenatti had anything of substance he wouldn’t be playing cute by claiming corroborating witnesses and then declining to name them or produce them. He would have run with them to his friends at CNN and been on twice every hour of the day instead of his usual single hourly appearance. Because he didn’t, and because the press found nothing independently in Swetnick’s allegations to back him up, the conclusion was made in Congress that the feds needn’t bother investigating the Swetnick matter in light of the deadline they were facing. You would think a guy as supposedly media-savvy as Avenatti would have grasped that and acted accordingly from the start.
Or it could be that he did grasp it but felt obliged to keep Swetnick and the “witnesses” away from the cameras as much as possible because he knew they wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. Plus, let’s be real: The FBI could have spent a month investigating the Swetnick allegations and Avenatti would have whined afterward that it was insufficient if they turned up nothing credible. He’s Trumpy in many ways, but particularly in the sense that emanates from him that he’s incapable of seeing an outcome as fair if it goes against him. (That’s the essence of “He fights!” logic, really.)
But here’s the good news for Billy Batts: If he really does have the goods, nothing’s stopping him from blowing up Kavanaugh now. Bring out the witnesses and sit down for a full hour with Anderson Cooper or whoever to go through the story piece by piece. The fact that Kavanaugh has been sworn in as a justice only raises the stakes for substantiating a big reputation-destroying claim about youthful “rape parties” right now. Imagine how much that would achieve for Avenatti. Kavanaugh would be wrecked personally and professionally. If he didn’t resign immediately, it would turbo-charge the demands for impeachment. Trump and Republicans would be shattered, left to explain why they ignored Swetnick in the first place and saddled with the fact that they confirmed a likely rapist to the Supreme Court. The party would be torn in half as the impeachment debate played out. The FBI would be humiliated for having overlooked Avenatti’s evidence in its own investigation. And the left would be so ecstatic about his ability to turn defeat in the Kavanaugh matter into an unlikely total victory that he’d become the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination overnight. All he has to do his show cards.
If he doesn’t, what are we to conclude about the strength of the hand he’s holding? What are we to conclude about it if he and Swetnick don’t demand that Maryland police launch a very belated investigation of the “rape parties”?
Via the Right Scoop, here’s Susan Collins making an underappreciated point about how Avenatti and Swetnick changed the process. It’s not just that their more outlandish claims intensified perceptions of a smear campaign, it’s that they helped justify Kavanaugh’s display of anger at his hearing. That anger, which rallied the base to his side, was what saved his nomination. If he had been that angry with only the Ford allegation against him, it likely would have put everyone off and sunk him. Exit question: Would Swetnick have gotten more traction if she had chosen a different lawyer to represent her? Both Republicans and Democrats had political reasons to want Avenatti to fail here. If Swetnick had gone to, say, Gloria Allred instead, what would have happened? It still would have been a circus but maybe not one that Dems would have shied away from.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Kavanaugh owes an enormous debt to @MichaelAvenatti , who may have turned the tide in his favor by diluting Ford’s compelling accusation with an implausible story. — Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) October 7, 2018
How about that, the Dersh reverts to his Demagogic Party roots.
Demonrats were drunk with vengeance.
Zealous witchhunters who didn’t believe the charges themselves, just an excuse to lynch the man and see that his family was attacked.
we still need to see the full list of names of congress men and women and their staff who’s sexual assault/harassment claims were settled by a $17,000,000 taxpayer funded slush fund.
The angry Left and blackmailed “right” must be exposed.
They can’t use this issue to lynch nominees on no evidence and have this skeleton in their own closet while in Federal office on the public dime.
Thank heaven if it stops working!!!
Never underestimate a rat 🐀 They will probably still try it. Some people need to drag up a bunch of dirt on these ass hats 🎩
Chuck Schumer was challenged about sexual harassment allegations last December.
He says that the dates don’t sync up with his alibi (out of town/country).
He said he’d pursue legal action but I never heard anymore on it.
So did he settle to squash the story?
“One lie, all lies.”
The Democrats were doing the same as Avanatti, they were just less grotesque about the fake details — the deceptions were the same.
Who knows? Maybe he paid her off with tax payer money. It sounds like what a rat 🐀 would do.
Hey Gary Peters you talk about 'circus'? What about the screaming fake protesters? The 'bused in to be screaming banshees' crazies?
Everything to do with democrats is fake, hysterical or violent... Get a grip on reality Gary Peters... the democrat party IS the circus..
Not True.
Back when I was in HS, long before any of this supposedly happened there were a few girls who went to "rape parties" every weekend. They enjoyed it.
The were called "sluts" and they were real. And, no it wasn't rape -- it was consensual. Now over the intervening decades their attitudes may have changed and in their own minds it became "rape".
Whether Kavanaugh ever went to a party like that is an open question
Keep in mind that the Dems only had to swing ONE more Republican vote - such as Collins or Flake, and Kavanaugh would still be in the junior league (Manchin stated that he was not about to be the 50th vote for Brett, so he would have flipped at that point).
I agree with the Dems - Avanti’s antics may have just prevented that swing...by pissing off the soft Republicans just enough to give them the backbone to stand up to that crap, regardless of their default-belief in vagina-first or ‘the women’s vote’.
Nobody corroborates her, and she has a history of lying. Avenatti went looking for people like her with cash in hand. She never surfaces unless he goes looking for her.
That’s why the question of her being more believable with another attorney is a bogus question.
Then why did you bring Swetnick”s accusations up at the hearing?
Hey - he’s a team player and as they went further into the gutter, he thought maybe he could be helpful getting them the rest of the way there...what they’re really saying is he isn’t as sneaky and effectively conniving as they are when it comes to dispensing evil...
List? We ain't got no list. We doan need no list. I doan have to show you any stinkin list!
I hope they lose control of these people. But as long as they keep paying them, the dems should be OK.
Boo hoo hoo hoo...
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