By now you know that Brett Kavanaugh believes in expansion of presidential power and that he doesn’t think that a sitting president should be troubled with minor annoyances like subpoenas or indictments, that s/he should be above it all. Senator Richard Blumenthal dropped a small bombshell on TV last night, saying that he has discovered that Trump wants Kavanaugh to help him fire Robert Mueller.
Well, of course, first, like good lawyers on the Judiciary Committee we’re doing a ton of research and what we have discovered is this nominee is in favor of giving the president power to fire the special counsel who is investigating him. That he is in favor of vast expansion of presidential power when most Americans today want Donald Trump to be checked and bridled because he’s out of control.
Trump is all in favor of expanded presidential power and increased immunity, and most of all the ability to pardon at will and even self pardon. This nominee is in favor of all that as well. Now the good news is that even though Trump said yesterday that it would be “a beautiful month” watching the Kavanaugh confirmation process, there is no way in hell that the process can move that swiftly.
Kavanaugh’s work product over the years has been prolific and all of those voluminous files have to be gone through in order to properly vet him for the confirmation process. None other than Mitch McConnell warned Trump that it would be impossible to confirm Kavanaugh quickly, but of course Trump didn’t listen. According to Politico there is no way that millions of documents can be gone through by Labor Day. That means the GOP’s goal of seating Kavanaugh in time for the beginning of the court’s next term in early October is well nigh impossible.
In addition, the longer the hearing takes and the closer it gets to the midterms, the greater the likelihood that the final vote will be delayed until after the midterms, which is what should happen anyway. We can all still hear echoes of McConnell insisting that the SCOTUS nomination of Merrick Garland be delayed until after the 2016 elections so that “the people have a chance to speak.” Terrific, let’s give the people a chance to speak, by all means. This is karma coming back to bite the GOP in the butt.
Finally, delaying the vote until after the elections takes place relieves Democratic senators in red states of additional pressure.
Kavanagh’s confirmation is not going to be a slam dunk. He’s not a good candidate and the GOP is not going to easily shove him down our throat. Here’s the entire Blumenthal piece from Tuesday if you want more detail.
If he does fire Mueller won’t the investigation still continue?
There have been contingency plans made in the House for the investigation to continue but this is one of those theories nobody wants to test.