Jake Tapper (pictured above left), the host of CNN’s “State of the Union,” on Sunday discussed next steps in the Judge Brett Kavanaugh nomination process after the FBI concludes its investigation into Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against the high court nominee.
“So moving forward to a vote, millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, are going to look at this process,” said Tapper. “And I have to wonder what Chief Justice John Roberts thinks about this process, also as somebody who cares deeply about the integrity of the court and not wanting it to be political. Tens of millions of Americans are going to look at Justice Kavanaugh as somebody who got away with it.”
One of his guests weighed in on that statement.
“As they did Clarence Thomas,” said Linda Chavez (above right), syndicated columnist and the director of the Becoming American Initiative, a group that promotes the positive impacts of immigrants on society, according to its website. “This is a Rorschach test, and, I mean, this process was so badly bungled by both sides. You know, the minute these allegations came out, I said, ‘Get the FBI out again and do an investigation.’ That should have been done actually before the hearing. I think it’s unfortunate that it happened here.”
She continued: “That is what’s normally done. I went through — not accusations of sexual assault, obviously — but I went through accusations against me, when I was up for secretary of Labor [Chavez was nominated by George W. Bush but eventually withdrew her name]. And by the time I got off the telephone and drove home, the FBI was practically on my doorstep, waiting to re-interview me and re-interview other people.”
Chavez emphasized that in her view, the lack of corroborating evidence against Kavanaugh isn’t the only issue at stake.
“I want questions asked of Dr. Ford as well,” she said. “We can’t live in a society in which accusations of this kind of activity are enough —”
Tapper interrupted her, saying, “Give me one question you want to ask her.”
Chavez said, “She [Ford] has a very clear recollection of going down the stairs and going outside. This was a woman who didn’t drive; somebody drove her home.”
She continued, “We didn’t have cellphones [back in the early 1980s], we didn’t have Ubers — there are other people who need to be questioned. I can remember as a 15-year-old who used to drive me — not to every single event — but there were just a handful of people who drove, when we went to parties, and my father [drove].”
“Obviously one of these people does have a faulty memory.”
She concluded, “So I do think more questions — this idea that we have to believe Dr. Ford just because she testified about what happened in that room — obviously one of these people does have a faulty memory.”
See the discussion in the video below.
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