‘You Can’t Do It Quietly’: Top Democrat Overheard Discussing Kavanaugh Impeachment Plans

by Peter Hasson

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee was overheard Wednesday discussing Democrats’ plans to investigate and try to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler took a series of phone calls while riding the Acela train from New York to Washington, D.C, not knowing that The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway was also on the train and within earshot.

Nadler is set to take over as judiciary chairman as a result of Democrats flipping the House in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Nadler claimed in one call that “there’s a real indication that Kavanaugh committed perjury,” claiming the justice misled about when he first heard about the second of several unproven allegations against him.

Nadler claimed Kavanaugh was “asked at a committee hearing under oath when he first heard of the subject, he said, ‘When I’d heard of The Atlantic article.’ But there is an email chain apparently dating from well before that from him about ‘How can we deal with this?’”

Nadler appeared to confuse The Atlantic with The New Yorker, which first reported the second allegation.

The congressman’s claim echoed a misleading NBC News article that left out crucial context about Kavanaugh’s answer — one of several Kavanaugh stories that NBC got wrong.

Nadler reportedly said, when his interlocutor objected to his plan.

“The worst-case scenario — or best case depending on your point of view — you prove he committed perjury, about a terrible subject and the Judicial Conference recommends you impeach him. So the president appoints someone just as bad,” Nadler added.

Nadler rejected the caller’s suggestion that Democrats investigate Kavanaugh quietly.

“You can’t do it quietly because word will get out that the FBI or the committee is reaching out to witnesses,” he said.

Nadler also assailed the FBI’s background investigation probing the allegations against Kavanaugh.

“They didn’t even do a half-ass job,” Nadler said. “They didn’t interview 30 witnesses who said, ‘Interview me! I’ve got a lot to say!’” the congressman added.

An extensive investigation by the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee found “no evidence” to support the Kavanaugh accusations.

Nadler’s communications director Daniel Schwarz claimed Hemingway’s story was “an absolutely false and deliberately inaccurate report,” in an emailed statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Schwarz did not return a follow-up inquiry asking him to point to specific quotations or passages in Hemingway’s report that he thought were inaccurate.

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