Intercept Report Reveals Senate Ignored Federal Court Employees Willing To Testify Against Kavanaugh

Posted By: Mark Taylor September 20, 2018

Democracy Now! (9/18/18)

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley has announced that the committee will hold another hearing on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh next Monday in light of accusations that he attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl at a party while he was in high school. Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, professor Christine Blasey Ford, will testify under oath.

As the allegations against Kavanaugh gain steam, a new report from Ryan Grim for The Intercept has revealed that attorney Cyrus Sanai tried multiple times to reach out to Senators Charles Grassley and Dianne Feinstein on behalf of federal court employees also willing to speak out against Kavanaugh. The employees wanted to talk about Kavanaugh’s work as a clerk for disgraced former 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who resigned in 2017 after being accused by at least 15 women of sexual misconduct. But Sanai never heard back. Kavanaugh has said repeatedly that he did not witness Kozinski behave in a sexually inappropriate way.

We speak with Ryan Grim, Washington, D.C., bureau chief for The Intercept. His latest piece is headlined “Attorney Sent Letter to Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein Claiming Federal Court Employees Willing to Speak About Brett Kavanaugh.”

Link to Story, Transcript and 20-Minute Video

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Attorney Sent Letter To Chuck Grassley & Dianne Feinstein Claiming Federal Court Employees Willing To Speak About Brett Kavanaugh

By Ryan Grim
The Intercept (9/17/18)

THE TOP REPUBLICAN and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee were both approached in July by an attorney claiming to have information relevant to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The attorney claimed in his letter that multiple employees of the federal judiciary would be willing to speak to investigators, but received no reply to multiple attempts to make contact, he told The Intercept.

Cyrus Sanai made his first attempt to reach out to Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a letter dated July 24.

Sanai told the committee leadership that “there are persons who work for, or who have worked for, the federal judiciary who have important stories to tell about disgraced former Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, and his mentee, current United States Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I know that there are people who wish to speak out but fear retaliation because I have been contacted by more than a half-dozen such persons since Judge Kozinski resigned in disgrace.”

Sanai is the California attorney who blew the whistle on Kozinski years before a series of articles in the Washington Post in December finally brought about the resignation of the former chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court over sexual harassment revelations. Sanai has long challenged the judiciary and was deemed a “vexatious litigant” by one trial court, an attempted designation that was overturned on appeal.

Since Kozinski’s resignation, questions have been raised about what Kavanaugh knew or did about such behavior, given the close relationship between the two. …

Read the Rest

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