Buried in a WaPo story entitled “Kavanaugh accuser won’t testify Monday but open to doing so later next week,” is this:
Ed Whelan, a former clerk to the late justice Antonin Scalia and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, pointed to floor plans, online photographs and other information to suggest a location for the house party in suburban Maryland that Ford described. He also named and posted photographs of the classmate he suggested could be responsible.
[...]
Whelan has been involved in helping to advise Kavanaugh’s confirmation effort and is close friends with both Kavanaugh and Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society who has been helping to spearhead the nomination. Kavanaugh and Whelan also worked together in the Bush administration.
Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident involving Ford happened, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
(Link is behind a pay-wall, sorry)
I provide some rearrangement of the text, to clarify
The Post doesn’t say it in so many words. But there are several key pieces of information which tell a story.
- Whelan is close friends with Kavanaugh and Leo.
- Whelan is part of the team advising and assisting Kavanaugh through the confirmation process.
- We also learn that “Kavanaugh and his allies” have been working on a defense that sounds very much like the one Whelan rolled out on Twitter tonight: an explanation that both exonerates Kavanaugh but does so without attacking Blasey Ford’s good faith. “She was a victim. She deserves our sympathy. But it wasn’t Brett Kavanaugh. That part was a misunderstanding.”
Put these facts together and it is very, very hard to believe that Kavanaugh and his top advisors did not at least know the outlines of Whelan’s theory. If that’s true, it’s big, big trouble and shows a level of recklessness and irresponsibility that shouldn’t have Kavanaugh sitting as a judge on any court let alone the Supreme Court. Whether Kavanaugh and Leo knew just what Whelan was going to do tonight is much less clear. But again, put those facts above together and it’s a real stretch to think Whelan hadn’t at least discussed his theory with Kavanaugh’s team.
Again, put the facts together. Whelan is part of Kavanaugh’s confirmation advisor team at the highest levels. Kavanaugh and his advisors have been working on a defense theory like the one Whelan tweeted about. Conservative political and legal circles have been buzzing about the goods Whelan was about to unload for the last couple days.
Are we really supposed to believe Whelan never mentioned any of this to Kavanaugh or Leo? That this was the first they ever heard of it?
[...]
It is highly likely that Whelan and his associates spent the last two or three days shopping this story to reporters. The Times’ Maggie Haberman first retweeted Whalen’s thread and then deleted those retweets. She then said that Whelan’s theory was “something Kavanaugh allies had privately said could be the case for days.”
A generous interpretation could be that Ed Whelan merely took a strategy that was being discussed in meetings with McGahn, Kavanaugh et al, and just went to town with it. On his own. Without telling anyone on the team. The “lone-shooter” theory.
Notice that Whelan was apparently working for DAYS on his “theory.”
And reports say that Whelan had been goosing the media, that he had a bombshell defense in the works. One that would save the confirmation of his good friend. You’d think, his teammates might just ask him, “what are you up to Ed?”
And so, when Whelan tweeted on Tuesday night that he expected Kavanaugh to be “clearly vindicated” of sexually assaulting Ford within the week, conservatives took notice. Even mainstream journalists treated his hints as credible, wondering what information he might have that could exonerate the nominee.
If Ed was in on strategy meetings, but couldn’t attend because of his diligent sleuthing, one might think that the other participants would:
- Wonder where he was?
- Wonder what he was up to?
- Decry the fact that he was goofing off?
I would say, even more strongly than Josh, that it belies credibility that Kavanaugh was unaware of Whelan’s work on this.
But if he was giving status updates to the group, then that points to the likelihood that Kavanaugh knew about, and even encouraged such antics.
Remember, Brett Kavanaugh was has been an unabashed political operative for many years, before being named a District Appeals Court Judge. My guess is that his knee-jerk response was to interpret the Ford allegation as an attack from the Left. The Right claimed it as such, as well.
The political strategist in him likely came alive, and discussions of a defense-strategy were from an operative’s brain. List this as another reason why he is not only unfit to serve on SCOTUS, but his impeachment for his present judgeship should be considered.
Add to all of this, the fact that Whelan apologizes ONLY for the way he named his alternate-assailant publicly, not for the “theory” itself.
That “way” was: Post his old address, his high school yearbook photo, and a current photo. Not so much a “mistake of judgement” as a “carefully considered, seriously researched attempt to point a giant neon finger at this poor guy.”
Notably, Whelan did not back down from his claim that Kavanaugh’s classmate was nevertheless the alleged attempted rapist in this case.
No, common sense says that Brett Kavanaugh at least KNEW about Ed’s theory, and either:
- Disapproved, but did nothing to stop him
- Approved, but kept his distance
- Approved, and assisted Whelan
Either way, these are NOT the preferred attributes of a U.S. Supreme Court Judge.
Supporting Evidence:
Now, to be clear, this notion had been kicking around the rightwing circles in which Kavanaugh has spent most of his career for a while now. The Washington Examiner wrote on Tuesday that Kavanaugh himself told Orrin Hatch that he thought Ford might be mistaken about who tried to rape her. Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post wrote an entire column speculating on the possibility. When Whelan's tweet storm broke, Ross Douthat of The New York Times vouched for Whelan's bona fides as a Very Serious Person. And then the roof fell in.
Also, note that Whelan “apologized” at 8:38am this morning
Simultaneous to (or after) that, Fox and Friends was pushing his theory:
Explained host Steve Doocy:
A fella by the name of Ed Whelan, who had been one of the clerks for Antonin Scalia, and a supporter of Judge Kavanaugh—he looked at what Christine Ford told The Washington Post and figured out, ‘okay, these people were named, these four people, where did they live?’ And looked at what she had said and figured out what house it may have happened at—because it was the house closest to the golf course—and then realized whose house it was, and looked at a picture of the young man who lived there at the time, who was a classmate of Mr. Kavanaugh’s. Put up side by side images—they look a lot alike.
“A fella” who is close to both Kavanaugh, Leo, McGahn, Bush Jr. et al.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a retraction from Fox.
From The American Conservative:
It is inconceivable that this Whelan defense will help Kavanaugh in any way. In fact, it’s so nasty and desperate-seeming that it taints Kavanaugh, despite that fact that he might have had nothing to do with it.
And now it’s clear that a top GOP activist and close Kavanaugh friend will risk destroying the life of a private citizen — about whom there is not a shred of evidence that he did anything wrong— for the sake of getting Kavanaugh on the Court.
How on earth did Whelan convince himself that it was okay to put that man’s name and face out there under these circumstances? Whelan is not a hack. He’s a former Supreme Court clerk and a very smart man.