Democrat Rep. Joe Neguse: Perjury investigation against Kavanaugh ‘likely’

In October, House Democrats promised to impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh if they won a majority in the November midterms, and it looks like they may be following through with that pledge.

Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse (CO), a freshman member of the House Judiciary Committee, was recently captured on camera telling constituents that his party plans to investigate Kavanaugh for perjury.

“There’s no question [Kavanaugh] committed perjury during the confirmation hearings and so forth,” Neguse said when asked if the newest Supreme Court justice would be impeached. “I think the Judiciary Committee is likely to take that up.”

Resurrecting a political hit job

Conservative activists obtained a video of Neguse’s remarks and distributed them to the public. Watch as the congressman, who has been in office for less than a month, indicts Kavanaugh without evidence and calls for his impeachment:

Since the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, when Kavanaugh publicly responded to accusations of sexual assault, Democrats have advanced several theories contending that the justice committed perjury. According to The Daily Caller, one of those theories included accusations from NBC News that Kavanaugh lied when he told the Senate about when he first learned of accusations from Deborah Ramirez.

In a report from the New Yorker, Ramirez claimed that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a college fraternity party. The justice told the committee he first learned of this allegation from the media, but NBC News presented text messages between Kavanaugh and his supporters which showed that he had advance knowledge of the allegations before the New Yorker piece was published.

However, NBC News was compelled to stealth-edit its report when the network learned that Kavanaugh actually spoke to Senate investigators about Ramirez’s allegations before the confirmation hearings, undercutting Democrat’s claims of perjury.  NBC News failed to issue a retraction and only quietly corrected the record.

Wild theories

Other perjury theories are equally unconvincing, and it is hard to fathom why Neguse believes there is “no question” that Kavanaugh lied under oath. Other alleged mistruths include unsubstantiated claims that Kavanaugh lied about the contents of his high school yearbook, or covered up his role in a plot to steal documents from Senate Democrats during the George W. Bush administration.

Meanwhile, the newest addition to the Supreme Court has turned out to be far less extreme than Democrats predicted. He has deferred to Chief Justice John Roberts by siding with liberal members of the court regarding abortion and census controversies, and his response to oral arguments has been moderate and unobtrusive.

Besides Neguse, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler (NY) has privately raised the prospect of an impeachment hearing. En route to DC for a two-day planning session with Judiciary Committee staff, Nadler was overheard on a passenger train remarking that “there’s a real indication that Kavanaugh committed perjury.”

Nadler also discussed plans to target the FBI for how they carried out President Donald Trump’s orders to investigate the sexual assault claims which Kavanaugh faced. “They didn’t even do a half-a** job,” he allegedly said during a phone conversation. “They didn’t interview 30 witnesses who said ‘Interview me! I’ve got a lot to say!’”

Political circus continues

Kavanaugh was confirmed in October along mostly party lines after his accusers failed to corroborate their decades-old claims. Ultimately, the confirmation hearings were viewed as a political circus by Republicans, and the Democratic smear campaign galvanized conservative voters ahead of the 2018 midterms.

Kavanaugh is a qualified judge and honorable family man who deserves to move on from this scandal. But pursuing these same unverified charges in the House, Democrats will only succeed in damaging their cause and further alienating swing voters.