This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/politics/trump-kavanaugh-accusations-hoax.html

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Trump Calls Allegations Against Kavanaugh ‘a Hoax’ Trump Seeks to Make Kavanaugh Furor a Campaign Asset, Not a Liability
(about 5 hours later)
ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump went further on Monday than he has before in dismissing sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh as the creation of political opponents, calling them “a hoax” and “fabricated.” ORLANDO, Fla. — When a bitterly divided Senate confirmed Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh despite sexual misconduct allegations a month before the midterm elections, strategists in both parties anticipated that it could turbocharge Democratic efforts to take over the House, if not all of Congress.
With Justice Kavanaugh now confirmed and sworn in, Mr. Trump moved beyond simply questioning the credibility of his accusers to asserting that their stories were made up entirely. Last week he mocked the main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, for gaps in her memory but did not explicitly suggest that her account was invented. One person who did not get the memo? President Trump.
Mr. Trump made his comments in response to questions about House Democrats who have talked about impeaching Justice Kavanaugh after the midterm elections in four weeks. “So I’ve been hearing that now they’re thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist, a man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats, using the Democrats’ lawyers, and now they want to impeach him,” Mr. Trump told reporters. Rather than falling back on defense amid roiling outrage, especially among women, Mr. Trump is going on offense, trying to turn the furor into an asset instead of a liability. With the world’s loudest megaphone, he hopes to make the issue not the treatment of women in the #MeToo era but the treatment of men who deserve due process.
Speaking at the White House shortly before flying to Orlando to address the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the president said that would be “an insult to the American people” and that voters had come to the conclusion that this was a fraud. Referring to one woman who said she attended high school parties where women were sexually assaulted, Mr. Trump said, “It was all made up, it was fabricated and it’s a disgrace.” For Mr. Trump and his Republican allies, this is a big gamble, with control of at least one house of Congress and possibly both on the line. Polls generally show that more Americans believed Christine Blasey Ford, the main accuser, than Justice Kavanaugh. The national mood over the past year has been less forgiving of powerful men accused of taking advantage of women.
After the speech, Mr. Trump returned to Washington intending to host a televised ceremony at the White House at 7 p.m. marking Justice Kavanaugh’s ascension to the court. Justice Kavanaugh was already sworn in twice over the weekend after his Senate confirmation on a 50 to 48 vote. The president’s calculation, however, is that conservative voters who for most of the year have been lethargic about the congressional elections can now be motivated to turn out by anger over the Democratic attacks on Justice Kavanaugh. Liberal voters, in this view, were already animated by their opposition to Mr. Trump and likely to vote even before Justice Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault and exposing himself during drunken school parties, so Democrats have less to gain at this point.
Presidents often host another such symbolic swearing-in for the purposes of showing off their Supreme Court appointees. But in doing so in a prime evening hour, Mr. Trump appears intent on bannering his success in confirming Justice Kavanaugh in an even more prominent way to rally conservative voters in next month’s midterm elections. “I think you’re going to see a lot of things happen on Nov. 6 that would not have happened before,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday before flying to Orlando to address the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “The American public has seen this charade, has seen this dishonesty by the Democrats.”
While Democrats have asserted that Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation will benefit them in the Nov. 6 elections because of outrage among women and other voters, Mr. Trump showed on Monday that he plans to go on offense, taking the issue to the electorate to tap into anger on the other side at what he portrays as a political smear. Rather than moving on to other issues, Mr. Trump made a point of showcasing his appointment of Justice Kavanaugh on Monday evening with a nationally televised swearing-in ceremony at the White House, an event unnecessary legally since he was already sworn in on Saturday but useful politically, as the president sees it.
When he boasted about Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the police chiefs in Orlando, they applauded enthusiastically. The president extolled Justice Kavanaugh’s education and career and said he had told his nominee that “this is going to be a piece of cake getting you confirmed,” then smiled at the misguided prediction. Mr. Trump continued his combative tone at the White House ceremony, in a highly unusual departure from the usual platitudes featured at such events.
“I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain you have been forced to endure,” Mr. Trump said, citing “a campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception.”
Justice Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump said, had been “proven innocent.”
The president took a far different tone from Justice Kavanaugh, who noted at the ceremony that the Supreme Court “is not a partisan or political institution” and pledged to be “an independent and impartial justice.”
Conservative leaders said that Mr. Trump was trying to define the battle on his terms and that part of his appeal to his political base had been his willingness to fight.
“He’s smart to step into it,” said Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, whose wife, Mercedes Schlapp, is a senior White House official. “What President Trump is realizing is that for his supporters they don’t want their leader of their movement, the head of their party to back down. Most politicians would just cower and say, ‘Boy it’s not fair, but I might have to find another nominee.’ President Trump understands that’s absolutely the opposite of what his base wants to see.”
President George Bush took another approach after the explosive confirmation fight that put Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court despite sexual harassment allegations by Anita F. Hill. Mr. Bush’s instinct was to calm the waters, and soon after the vote in 1991 he signed a modified version of a civil-rights bill that he had vetoed the year before. He did not make a point of rehashing the battle over Justice Thomas on the campaign trail in 1992.
Democrats acknowledge that the battle over Justice Kavanaugh may help select Republicans, particularly in red states that voted for Mr. Trump like North Dakota, where Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, was already struggling before voting against confirmation. But in general they said voters are more driven to the ballot box by grievance than gratitude.
“Midterm elections are always about punishment and never about reward,” said Steve Israel, a former congressman from New York and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Turnout is generated by voters who want to punish a president and his party. They don’t usually turn out because they’re happy. So ironically, Kavanaugh’s confirmation will help Democratic turnout. As he himself said, ‘What goes around comes around.’”
Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and former White House official, said Mr. Trump had already made himself anathema to many female voters. “Injecting himself into the aftermath and making it his victory to crow about may work with his absolute base but is probably not helpful with voters who didn’t like the spectacle and therefore don’t like the president continuing the spectacle,” she said. “And there is no doubt that making it about himself will keep his opponents equally, if not more, energized than his base.”
Mr. Trump went further on Monday than he has before in dismissing the sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Kavanaugh as the creation of political opponents, calling them “a hoax” and “fabricated.” Last week, he mocked Dr. Blasey for gaps in her memory but did not explicitly suggest that her account was invented.
Mr. Trump made his comments in response to a reporter’s question about House Democrats who have talked about impeaching Justice Kavanaugh after the midterm elections. “So I’ve been hearing that now they’re thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist, a man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats, using the Democrats’ lawyers, and now they want to impeach him,” Mr. Trump said.
The president said that would be “an insult to the American people” and that voters had come to the conclusion that the case against Justice Kavanaugh was a fraud. Citing a woman who said she attended high school parties where women were sexually assaulted, Mr. Trump said, “It was all made up, it was fabricated and it’s a disgrace.”
When he boasted about Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation later in the day to the police chiefs in Orlando, they applauded enthusiastically. The president extolled Justice Kavanaugh’s education and career and said he had told his nominee that “this is going to be a piece of cake getting you confirmed,” then smiled at the misguided prediction.
“It was very unfair what happened to him,” Mr. Trump went on. “False charges, false accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue.” He added: “It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil. And he toughed it out. We all toughed it out together.”“It was very unfair what happened to him,” Mr. Trump went on. “False charges, false accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue.” He added: “It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil. And he toughed it out. We all toughed it out together.”
Dr. Blasey, 51, a psychology professor in California, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that during a small high school party in the early 1980s, a drunken Justice Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, tried to take off her clothes and covered her mouth when she screamed. Deborah Ramirez, 53, a Yale University classmate of Justice Kavanaugh’s, told the F.B.I. that he exposed his genitals to her during a dormitory party. Dr. Blasey, 51, a psychology professor in California, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that during a small high school party in the early 1980s, a drunken Mr. Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, tried to take off her clothes and covered her mouth when she screamed. Deborah Ramirez, 53, a Yale University classmate, told the F.B.I. that he exposed his genitals to her during a dormitory party. Justice Kavanaugh, 53, denied the allegations.
Justice Kavanaugh, 53, denied those allegations, and no witnesses came forward to say they witnessed the acts or that they talked with Dr. Blasey or Ms. Ramirez about the episodes at the time. Dr. Blasey passed a polygraph test administered by a former F.B.I. agent hired by her lawyers and many Republicans at first said that she seemed “very credible,” as Mr. Trump himself put it. Polls have suggested that the main divide over Justice Kavanaugh is partisan rather than gender: Republican women believe him almost as much as Republican men do, while Democratic men believe the accusers almost as much as Democratic women. The real gender divide comes among independents, where men are more likely to side with the justice and women with Dr. Blasey and Ms. Ramirez.
But the president has increasingly pivoted away from just attacking Democrats for exploiting the accusers to attacking the accusers themselves. Mr. Trump has himself been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women and he said during the confirmation battle that his experience made him more empathetic to Justice Kavanaugh. “Trump was already turning out Democrats at record numbers,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “Anyone who strongly opposes Kavanaugh was almost certainly not going to be voting Republican in November anyways. The big unknown is if Kavanaugh will turn out Republicans in November in a way that Trump couldn’t do on his own.”
While his appearance before the annual gathering of police chiefs was not formally a campaign event, Mr. Trump used the event to depict himself as a friend of law enforcement and said he was working to combat crime.
“We are turning that tide around very rapidly,” he said. “We are taking back our streets.”
As he has before, he said he would send federal authorities to help Chicago fight crime and urged the city to adopt more aggressive tactics, like the so-called stop-and-frisk policy used in New York. “Stop and frisk works,” Mr. Trump said. “The crime spree is a terrible blight on that city and we’ll do everything possible to get it done.”
New York began cutting back on its street stops in 2011 even before a judge ruled in 2013 that the city’s wholesale use of search practices violated the Constitution. Such stops have plummeted, but violent crime continued to fall even without them. Seven major felonies measured by the city police are down 9.7 percent since 2011, even as the stop-and-frisk practices were drastically reduced.
Mr. Trump has a fraught relationship with other elements of the American law enforcement establishment, repeatedly assailing the leadership of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department in connection with the investigation into his campaign ties to Russia.
As his former lawyer and former campaign chairman were prosecuted, Mr. Trump complained that the authorities should not be allowed to pressure criminal defendants into “flipping” on others with the threat of long prison sentences. He has also said that prosecutors should not have indicted two Republican congressmen because it could cost his party seats in the House.
The president made no mention of those criticisms in his talk with the police chiefs on Monday, but instead criticized politicians who do not support law enforcement, saying they “make life easier for criminals and more dangerous for law abiding citizens.”