"Just a Matter of Timing...."

The recently released audio of Devin Nunes revealing the actual Republican plan for managing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh vs. the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein unmasks the cynical effort to protect President Trump above all else.  Where the Congress is supposed to act as a check and balance on the Executive Branch, instead Republicans are abdicating their oaths of office to protect their own and Trump’s ass.  Instead of acting in the interests of the people they represent by searching for the truth about what happened in 2016, they rather are attempting to hide the truth, discredit the search for truth and destroy the mechanisms for justice.

Now we discover that the Republicans in the Senate are doing everything they can to restrict the availability of the background documents pertaining to the record of Kavanaugh’s actions and involvement in the Bush White House.  Why?  Because it turns out that Kavanaugh may have lied to Congress during his previous confirmation hearings when he was nominated to be a DC Court of Appeals judge in 2006, and the Republicans are only interested in expediting the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as fast as possible.  If they restrict the background documents that would clearly answer the question of Kavanaugh’s duplicity and medaciousness, then their goal of confirming him quickly will be met.

The reason this is crucial to their plans is an emblem of their cynicism.

If Kavanaugh is in place as the swing vote on the Supreme Court, then Constitutional questions arising from the impeachment of Rosenstein or a subpoena of Trump to Mueller’s grand jury that will surely reach the court will probably be decided by Kavanaugh’s vote. 

In 2006 Kavanaugh told the Senate in his DC Court of Appeals hearings for confirmation that, as a member of the legal department in Bush's White House, he had nothing to do with any discussions or decisions about policy regarding enhanced interrogation techniques or torture during the early Bush years.  If that was a lie, as the documents that Democratic senators want to review may reveal, Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court may be in real jeopardy.  Republicans would rather have a duplicitous judge on the Supreme Court to further their own interests, than to insure that the Supreme Court is a check and balance against the Executive and the Legislative branch as the founders intended.

(The first case that Kavanaugh heard in his new position on the DC Court of Appeals concerned the retention of a captured prisoner at Guantanamo and the issue of interrogation.  That particular court hears many similar cases.  If in fact Kavanaugh was not neutral, but had in fact developed or opined on the interrogation policy of the Bush Administration, he would probably not have been confirmed for that judgeship. Senate Republicans want to hide this information so they are now restricting documents detailing his activities in the Bush Administration.)

The reason the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein has been put on hold is that if it were to proceed, then the Senate would have to stop any further business while they adjudicated the impeachment case against Rosenstein.  Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court is more important.  The Republican plan is to take up Rosenstein’s impeachment right after the election.  Even if the Democrats win majority control of the House in November, the Republicans have the time between the election and the seating of the new Congress in January of next year to impeach Rosenstein; try him in what will still probably be a Republican Senate; convict him and replace him with someone who will fire and stop the Mueller probe.

THAT is the plan that Nunes was describing in the surreptitious audio recording made at the re-election fundraising event for Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodger last week.

These people will stop at nothing.  The integrity of our government is clearly at risk.  There is such consummate corruption and deception in this administration that it will take several election cycles to clean out this rot.  However the first hurdle is for all of us to take our responsibility seriously and vote in this midterm election.  If we fail to have a change in the House majority, the next two years will be worse than the last two, and frankly the ruins of our democracy will be all of our faults!