Chuck Schumer Behind Brett Kavanaugh Saga, According To Republican Conspiracy Theory
In the aftermath of Brett Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court, Republicans have begun floating the idea that all of the controversy that has surrounded the nomination of Kavanaugh over the month of September was a calculated strategy devised by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to reports by Business Insider.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt has been conducting interviews over Tuesday and Wednesday with several Republicans. During said interviews, an idea began to take shape that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — the woman who put forth the initial allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh — was being handled by Schumer in an effort to throw the nomination process into chaos.
Speaking to Hewitt on Tuesday, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton said, “The Schumer political operation was behind this from the very beginning.”
“We learned last week that a woman named Monica McLean was Ms. Ford’s roommate, and she was one of the so-called beach friends who encouraged Ms. Ford to go to Dianne Feinstein and the partisan Democrats on the Judiciary Committee,” Cotton continued. “Well, it just turns out, it just so happens that Monica McLean worked for a Preet Bharara, the former US Attorney in Manhattan, now a virulent anti-Trump critic on television and former counsel to Chuck Schumer… So I strongly suspect that Chuck Schumer’s political operation knew about Ms. Ford’s allegations as far back as July and manipulated the process all along to include taking advantage of Ms. Ford’s confidences and directing her towards left-wing lawyers,”
Republicans are floating a conspiracy that Chuck Schumer plotted the entire Kavanaugh saga https://t.co/41VA75iBJr
— Insider Politics (@insiderpolitics) October 10, 2018
Cotton’s claims about the Schumer and Blasey connection didn’t survive fact-checking, with the Washington Post giving his statement “four Pinocchios,” a rating reserved for only the most false of statements. The paper made it clear that McLean never worked for Bharara, making Cotton’s connecting of the dots impossible.
Matt House, who serves as a spokesman for Schumer, came forward to call Cotton’s allegations a “fairy tale” and likened it to the Arkansas senator’s previous claims to have never heard Trump use the phrase “s***hole countries” despite Senator Dick Durbin’s claim that the phrase was indeed used.
Despite Cotton’s theory not standing up to scrutiny, Hewitt continued to press forward with it. On Wednesday, Hewitt asked Utah Senator Mike Lee — a Republican who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee — for his thoughts.
“They were hiring legal counsel referred by Sen. Feinstein. They were taking polygraphs on the same day as Dr. Ford’s grandmother’s funeral,” said Lee as he gave his insight. “They were doing all this stuff at a time when allegedly she didn’t want to talk to anyone, and yet she wasn’t being informed by her own legal team that she had the opportunity to be interviewed in the privacy and comfort of her own home. She was never told that. So apparently somebody along the way decided that this was going to be a media circus, and they wanted to launch it at exactly the right time. That’s disgusting. That makes Dr. Ford a victim, at a minimum, of negligence by her lawyers, at a maximum of a deliberate campaign to misuse her. And I think that’s tragic. I think that needs to be looked into.”
Several Republicans have suggested an investigation into Ford’s initial letter — and its handling — as it was leaked to the public after the initial Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said on Tuesday that he had yet to make up his mind as to whether or not he would launch a probe into the issue.
