This may all be over now: Trump regime Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury in his Senate testimony last week if this NBC News story is true, and if so, he's fried like an egg on a sidewalk in Phoenix in July.
In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.
Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.
The texts between Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, both friends of Kavanaugh, suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about Ramirez’s story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public. In one message, Yarasavage said Kavanaugh asked her to go on the record in his defense. Two other messages show communication between Kavanaugh's team and former classmates in advance of the story.
In now-public transcripts from an interview with Republican Judiciary Committee staff on September 25, two days after the Ramirez allegations were reported in the New Yorker, Kavanaugh claimed that it was Ramirez who was “calling around to classmates trying to see if they remembered it,” adding that it “strikes me as, you know, what is going on here? When someone is calling around to try to refresh other people? Is that what’s going on? What’s going on with that? That doesn’t sound — that doesn’t sound — good to me. It doesn’t sound fair. It doesn’t sound proper. It sounds like an orchestrated hit to take me out.”
The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated. Berchem's efforts also show that some potential witnesses have been unable to get important information to the FBI.
This is bad enough, but if these texts are true, they are direct evidence of perjury. And he may have done so multiple times. First, in closed-door testimony before the Senate Judiciary on September 25:
Berchem's texts with Yarasavage shed light on Kavanaugh’s personal contact with friends, including that he obtained a copy of a photograph of a small group of friends from Yale at a 1997 wedding in order to show himself smiling alongside Ramirez 10 years after they graduated. Both were in the wedding party: Kavanaugh was a groomsman and Ramirez a bridesmaid at the wedding.
On Sept, 22nd, Yarasavage texted Berchem that she had shared the photo with “Brett’s team.”
But when Kavanaugh was asked about the wedding during a committee interview on Sept. 25th, he said he was “probably” at a wedding with Ramirez. Asked if he interacted with her at the wedding, Kavanaugh replied, “I am sure I saw her because it wasn’t a huge wedding,” but added that he “doesn’t have a specific recollection.” Lying to Congress is a felony whether testimony is taken under oath or not.
Second, he lied in the public hearing last week under oath.
Further, the texts show Kavanaugh may need to be questioned about how far back he anticipated that Ramirez would air allegations against him. Berchem says in her memo that Kavanaugh “and/or” his friends “may have initiated an anticipatory narrative” as early as July to “conceal or discredit” Ramirez.
Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that the first time he heard of Ramirez’s allegation was in the Sept. 23 article in The New Yorker.
Kavanaugh was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, when he first heard of Ramirez’s allegations. Kavanaugh answered: “In the New Yorker story.”
Kavanaugh was discussing the allegations of Deborah Ramirez with mutual acquaintances before the New Yorker article based on her allegations was published.
We now find out that these discussions may have happened as early as July, when Kavanaugh was first nominated. Which means they knew the allegations were coming, "they" in this case being Kavnaugh's team, the Trump White House, and almost certainly Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley. This is a whole other nasty mess that if true, merits a far-reaching investigation of its own because there should have been no reason to nominate Kavanaugh if they knew these allegations were coming...unless the fix was already in.
That's yet another fight for another day.
But when Kavanaugh answered Sen. Hatch's question about the first time hearing of the allegations being that New Yorker story, he lied under oath. That's perjury. That's ballgame.
Period.
Game over.
He's done.
Stay tuned.
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