Trump blasts calls for impeachment of Brett Kavanaugh after new allegations

Source: The Guardian

September 15, 2019 at 17:56

Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate judiciary committee in September 2018. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

New York Times details new claims against supreme court judge

Donald Trump came storming to the defence of Brett Kavanaugh on Sunday, after the publication of new allegations about the supreme court justice’s behaviour while he was a student at Yale led to renewed calls for his impeachment.

Kamala Harris and Julían Castro were among Democrats leading the charge. Both called for impeachment, Harris saying Kavanaugh “lied to the US Senate and most importantly to the American people”.

Bernie Sanders added his shoulder to the wheel, saying he supported “any appropriate constitutional mechanism to hold [Kavanaugh] accountable”.

Trump tweeted: “The Radical Left Democrats and their Partner, the LameStream Media, are after Brett Kavanaugh again.”

On Saturday, the New York Times, a leading target for Trump’s ire, published an essay adapted from a new book by two of its reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.

In the extract from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: an Investigation, Pogrebin and Kelly looked into the judge’s time at Yale in the 1980s.

The piece concerned a claim by another student, Deborah Ramirez, that at a drunken party, Kavanaugh “pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it”.

Ramirez’s claim surfaced during Kavanaugh’s stormy confirmation last year, though it did not attract as much attention as that of Dr Christine Blasey Ford, an academic who said Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a high school party.