Christine Ford’s latest attorney (joining Katz and Banks) is Michael Bromwich. Bromwich has been a federal prosecutor, a special prosecutor, and a Department of Justice inspector general.
On Monday we learned that Bromwich is objecting to the Senate Judiciary Committee planning to use an outside attorney who is a woman and an “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” to question Christine Ford when she testifies (or doesn’t) at the Committee on Thursday.
(ADDENDUM: 09-25-2018 at 19:44 PDT — Late word is that the “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” engaged by the Republicans to question both Ford and Kavenaugh will be Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes bureau chief for the Maricopa County Attorney’s office in Phoenix, Arizona.)
The wording of Bromwich’s letter to the Committee Chairman Grassley was, I believe, an effort to portray Bromwich in the image of a knight in shining armor lawyer who will protect his client Ford from that evil outside prosecutor intent on bullying Pure-as-the-driven-snow Chrissie with a withering examination to humiliate and demean her as if she is some mopus erectus child molestor.
In fact, that is exactly the kind of treatment of Ford that Bromwich and the Democrats would like to see the Republicans on the Committee inflict. It would forever etch in viewers’ minds that Christine Ford is somehow being victimized by the old white Republican men on the Committee and, by extension, by Brett Kavanaugh.
Bromwich’s real concern, though, is more likely to be based his knowledge of how an “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” is really likely to question Ford during the nationally televised Judiciary Committee Circus on Thursday.
Bromwich is likely worried that instead of the viewing public seeing some aging great white Republican sharks cruelly playing with the bloody defenseless seal before leaving its carcass floating in the ocean, we are more likely to see the “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” woman having a sympathetic conversation with another woman, Christine Ford, who may very well have been a victim of an attack by someone some time in her high school years.
The “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” likely is a trial prosecutor with several major cases in front of juries. On Thursday the real jury will be the viewing audience, and every Senator on the Judiciary Committee knows it. Ideally, the “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” will draw on her criminal trial experience to gently point out the inadequacy bordering on complete absence of Ford’s information supporting her allegation while at the same time avoiding anything close to a personal attack on Ford.
In simple terms, Bromwich fears the woman prosecutor will be able to show the insufficiency of Ford’s information while generating the kind of sympathy for Kavanaugh and his family that Bromwich, Katz, Banks, and the Democrats hoped the curmudgeonly male Republican Senators’ questioning would produce for Ford.
It’s a lot to hope for, but I also hope the so far publicly unnamed “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” will be the one to question Kavanaugh.
It will be difficult for the ego-engorged Senators to surrender their coveted on-camera bloviating face time to an outsider not really a member of their club. However, this same woman prosecutor can accomplish something more than just a respectful, professional examination and elicitation of Ford’s information. She will be able to allow Kavanaugh to articulate his unquestionably superior professional qualifications. She will be able to elicit from Kavanaugh the scope and frequency of the background investigations he regularly endured, thus pointing out the unproductive redundancy of yet another time-consuming background investigation.
Beyond that, the woman prosecutor will be able to appeal to the sympathies of viewers at home for Kavanaugh, his wife, Ashley, and two young daughters, Liza and Margaret, who have endured personal physical threats of unimaginable violence and vulgarity.
Although Brett Kavanaugh is the President’s nominee to be an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, he and his family are being subjected to mental violence that most of us would be unwilling and unable to endure.
And for what I believe is the first time in the history of Judiciary Committee hearings for appointments to the US Supreme Court, the nominee is being threatened by members of the Democrat Party that if he is confirmed by the Senate and sworn by the President, he will be impeached and removed from the Court as soon as the Democrats have sufficient numbers in the House and Senate to impeach and convict. No evidence of wrongdoing will be necessary; his being appointed by President Trump will be sufficient to justify impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate.
The last thing Michael Bromwich wants is an “experienced sex crimes prosecutor” who can show the viewing public that if anyone is callously exploiting Christine Ford’s early life circumstances, it is members of the US Senate who want partisan surrogate legislators rather than impartial justices on the US Supreme Court.