New Hampshire Republican leader Andy Martin backs Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the U. S. Supreme Court
ANDY MARTIN WORLDWIDE
COMMUNICATIONS
Chicago-San
Francisco-Palm Beach-Manchester, NH
Headquarters mail:
P.O. Box 750426
Forest Hills, NY 11375-0426
Tel. (866) 706-2639
Fax (866) 214-3210
Web: AndyMartinWorldwide.com
E-mail: andymart20@aol.com
Andy
Martin, J. D.
Adjunct
Professor of Law
Managing
Director
September 25, 2018
Hon. Chuck Grassley
Chairman
Judiciary Committee
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
via Fax (202)
224-6020
Dear Senator
Grassley:
Because I believe
your somewhat inept leadership of the Judiciary Committee is doing incalculable
damage to the Senate and to your own staff, I am writing to express my opinions
and to ask that you take strong leadership in the continuing matter of the
confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
1. My background
and experience
I have litigated cases
in the D. C. Circuit going back forty-nine (49) years with a surprisingly strong
average of success, so I am familiar with that court. I was a witness concerning
another nominee in a hearing before your committee in 1974. I worked for
Senator Paul Douglas, worked with Senator Everett Dirksen’s office and served
as an outside consultant to Senator Phil Hart. I am not a partisan ideologue
although I am a conservative Republican.
I first went to the
Senate as an intern in 1965, working on a senior thesis in the
Parliamentarian’s office. I served as an informal background expert for the
Church Committee regarding the CIA.
Until recently, I
maintained an office on Connecticut Avenue where I did consulting, research and
analysis.
2. Culture analyst
As a student writer,
I wrote an unpublished novel titled the “Orphans of Suburbia,” which dealt with
adolescents and college students such as Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanagh. That
experience was woven into my analysis, research and profiling over the decades.
So, I think I am somewhat unique in understanding the culture of Georgetown
Prep and Yale. I was a football player and honor student at the University of
Illinois so I toggled between the “jock culture” and the “nerd culture.” When I
express analysis and opinions they are premised on a deep reservoir of
experience and observation.
3. Similar
incident experience
I have observed and
participated in situations where students were acting out, and where someone
exposed to a traumatic situation could not remember the episode a couple of
hours later. (Seven years later the victim still did not have any awareness of
the incident and the danger to her life.)
4. The witnesses
One witness, Dr.
Ford, was a child, and has never been analyzed with a focus on her status as a
child of fifteen (15) at the time her accusations arose. The perceptions of a
child differ materially from those of a mature adult. The other “witness,” Ms.
Ramirez, was a young adult at college. She can be expected to have greater
awareness and cognition.
Unfortunately, they
have been lumped together as “accusers” despite the fact that their emotional experiences
were very different and should not be conflated. I do not believe either
witness should be attacked. But even under the looser standards of a senate hearing
the testimony of every witness must be tested for accuracy. The bizarre claim
by some of your colleagues that any accusation, however undocumented, must
automatically be believed is sheer nonsense.
A. Dr. Ford
I have an intuitive
sense that Dr. Ford was exposed to something unpleasant. But I am challenged to
believe her story about Judge Kavanaugh. Initially I thought she was at some large,
raucous party. Today I became aware that the “party” may have been much
smaller, a factor that has to be carefully weighed in evaluating the
credibility of her testimony. I have been in fraternity parties at Wesleyan University
where people were indeed out of control and probably were not aware who was
doing what to whom (one reason I chose to attend the U. of I.).
We also have not seen
any awareness of the guilt trigger. If someone is guilty about what happened to
them in an incident, they will inevitably repress, suppress and distort memory
of that event. With all due respect, there is a greater likelihood that Dr.
Ford was failed by her parents than failed by Judge Cavanagh. A fifteen
year-old girl (child) should not have been sent unsupervised to a “party” with
a bunch of older boys. The conflicts and confusion that arose from an
unspecified experience at some unspecified location at some unspecified date
and time make her recollection of events tenuous even though there is a genuine
core to her trauma.
I know we are in a
senate hearing, and not a court of law, as some people seem to forget. But I doubt
a prosecutor would take a case to a grand jury where the victim’s recollections
were so highly selective and opaque.
I also find Dr. Ford to
be highly manipulative. We seem to forget she has a Ph.D. in psychology and has
been a researcher and faculty member for many years. So, when she claims she is
an ingenue in public, seeking special treatment, her explanation seems somewhat
hollow.
A person who is seeking
to stay anonymous does not start by contacting a newspaper and “requesting
confidentiality.” Whether she knows it or not, Dr. Ford’s initial contact with
the Washington Post psychoanalytically was an effort to become public and to be
drawn into a public arena. Like Bre’r Rabbit asking not to be thrown into the
Briar Patch, constant protestations of a desire for confidentiality, all made
to public officials, taken in totality are not the way an experienced college
professor advised by an experienced attorney would protect her anonymity.
Dr. Ford’s constant
confidentiality demands amount to a desire to enter the public sphere. That is
why I believe she is a highly manipulative individual and, with an increasingly
prominent cadre of attorneys to assist her, her uncompromising demands have
successfully made the Senate into a laughingstock.
As I write Tuesday
morning, she has “accepted” an offer to testify” without any announced criteria
for her testimony. How can you accept an offer without accepting all of the offer?
A partial acceptance is a counteroffer, not an acceptance. The Senate has
looked feeble while Dr. Ford has now been “believed” by senators and members of
the public who have never seen her, never heard her and have no idea what her
detailed accusations or evidence are. Such “belief” is more akin to a cult that
a confirmation proceeding.
B. Ms. Ramirez
The differences
between a fifteen year-old child and an eighteen year-old woman are considerable.
Thus Ms. Ramirez’ testimony can legitimately be held to a much higher standard.
Unfortunately, she offers an even less credible platform for her accusations.
If you have to caucus with a lawyer for several days to arrive at a “story,” no
prosecutor would take such a claim seriously. If you are still not clear on who
did what, decades later, there is little prospect that even the loser
evidentiary standards of a senate proceeding can rescue such an insufficient body
of factual information from irrelevance or disbelief.
5. Your somewhat
bizarre leadership of the process
A. The ridiculous
“witness” process
The clown show where
“witnesses” pop up long after the committee’s investigation and hearings have
been completed, and members of the Committee claim such witnesses “must be
heard,” is nonsense. The Committee should adopt strict, public procedural rules
for processing future nominations, so that the travesty of closing a hearing
and a background check, only to face claims of a need to reopen, must be
avoided.
The Committee looks incompetent,
feckless and out of control. No one has a right to obstruct or disrupt the Senate.
Orderly process is essential. Because you appear to have weak control of the
committee, you have been forced to tolerate the regrettable process where people
are popping up, demands are made for “investigations” and the abuse keeps repeating
itself, all in an untimely manner. Every area of government, legislative, judicial
and executive, routinely sets timetables and deadlines and adheres to them.
Your committee is out of control. Constant deadlines, all of which were then
ignored, undermine the credibility of the Committee. That is not negotiation;
it is capitulation.
B. Your failure to
defend staff
I have observed staff
up close for over half a century. The senate has some of the most competent investigators
and analysts in Washington. But when have you defended your staff and said
their investigation can be the functional equivalent of an FBI background check?
Instead we hear a constant chorus of demands for an “FBI investigation,” when
agents would only do what your staff is doing, try to locate witnesses, listen to
stale recollections and record them in some coherent manner. You need to stand
up for your staff and not let your employees be bullied by blustering attorneys
who do not hesitate to make exorbitant demands and posture for the media.
When the Church
Committee staff was investigating allegations of CIA misconduct, the evidence
was less than a decade old. I am not sure that FBI background checkers could do
a better job than your staff in evaluating what are now 35 year-old matters,
but nowhere have you stood up to say “enough of this FBI demand.” I can’t say
for sure, but I suspect that your experienced staff members could do an even
better job than the FBI, because they would be more relaxed and informal than agents.
C. Who runs the
Committee?
While I realize that
in most hearings senators want to ask the questions and posture for the cameras,
when you are dealing with allegations of criminal conduct due process demands a
more coherent interrogation process. I endorse the proposal that a female attorney
ask the questions. That way the process will not be interrupted every few minutes
as you switch from senator to senator, and counsel can ask follow-up and probing
questions without the necessity of yielding every five minutes or so. Who
should make the decision as to how questioning should proceed?
In what is one of the
more bizarre, and suspicious, demands by Dr. Ford, she wants senators to interrogate
her, because such questioning would be far less organized and coherent than an
inquiry presented by a single staff attorney, preferably a woman. If you don’t
have someone on staff that you believe can conduct a thorough examination of
the witness, there are many, many very competent women who are former prosecutors
and defense lawyers in Washington who would handle the job with ease. (I do not
believe former Senator Ayotte is a strong enough interrogator to fill this role.)
Dr. Ford’s accusations
have to be subjected to serious, searching inquiry. That is not possible with a
rotating panel of twenty-one senators. Even if the Democrats will not agree to
route their own questions through a single attorney, Republicans absolutely
must employ a single questioner, preferably a woman. Don’t bungle the inquiry
by using the traditional approach to more routine proceedings.
6. An offer of
assistance
Your staff is free to
pick up the phone and call me. I would be happy to offer insight and analysis.
As you can see from the foregoing I am something of an “all-in-one” expert with
experience in several areas of concern to the Committee.
7. Judge Kavanaugh
deserves a scrupulously fair process, not a one-sided circus
Watching members of
your Committee pontificate on their “belief” that Dr. Ford is telling the truth
has been a very disappointing
experience. I do not want to name names, but some senators are an embarrassment
to themselves and the states that sent them to Washington. There is no way you
can “believe” a witness you have never seen, who has never spoken and whose testimony
remains secret. Rather, to use Justice Thomas’ eternal comments, you are allowing
Judge Kavanaugh to be subjected to a “high-tech lynching.”
Judge Kavanaugh
deserves better. Let’s see if you provide it, or if the Jell-O-like leadership
of the Committee persists.
Respectfully
submitted,
Andy
ARM:sp
Labels: Andy Martin, Brett Kavanagh, New Hampshire, Senator Chuck Grassley, U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee
posted by Andy Martin | 12:06 AM
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