Ayanna Pressley calls for Brett Kavanaugh impeachment inquiry
Joe Kennedy supports the idea, too.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley ran for Congress last year calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
This week, she added another name to the list.
The Massachusetts congresswoman filed a resolution Tuesday afternoon calling for the House to open an impeachment inquiry into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, following new reports over the weekend about sexual misconduct allegations against the Trump-nominated judge.
Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed last year, despite multiple accounts of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1980s from his neighbor Christine Blasey Ford and Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez.
On Saturday, The New York Times published a book excerpt providing additional supporting evidence for Ramirez’s previously unverified story, as well as a similar-sounding account of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh during his college days (though the alleged female victim reportedly does not recall the event).
Pressley says the new information merits a House investigation.
“I believe Christine Blasey Ford. I believe Deborah Ramirez. It is our responsibility to collectively affirm the dignity and humanity of survivors,” the Boston Democrat said in a statement.
Pressley, as a sexual assault survivor herself, has made advocacy for victims of sexual violence a key focus during her political career and passionately spoke out against Kavanaugh’s nomination at a Boston rally last year. At the time, Senate Democrats criticized the rushed nature of the investigation into the allegations against the judge; Pressley said this week that the process “set a dangerous precedent.”
“We must demand justice for survivors and hold Kavanaugh accountable for his actions,” she said.
Pressley’s resolution, which calls for the House Judiciary Committee to look into the claims, mirrors a similar resolution introduced by Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib in March calling for the committee look into whether Trump committed impeachable offenses.
However, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Monday that the committee was too busy investigating potentially impeachable offenses by Trump to launch a similar inquiry looking into the sexual misconduct claims against Kavanaugh in the near future.
“We have our hands full with impeaching the president right now and that’s going to take up our limited resources and time for a while,” Nadler told the radio station WNYC.
Supreme Court justices can be impeached through the same process for impeaching a president, though it has only happened once. In 1805, the House impeached Justice Samuel Chase for partisan campaigning while serving on the court, but the Senate’s vote did not reach the two-third majority needed to convict him.
Following the Times report over the weekend, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and several other Democrats running for president in 2020 called for Kavanaugh to be impeached over the sexual misconduct allegations — which Republican leaders in the Senate have dismissed.
Pressley’s office didn’t say Tuesday if her resolution had any cosponsors, though her general effort did receive support on social media from one fellow Bay State representative: Rep. Joe Kennedy III.
“Someone facing credible sexual assault allegations does not belong on our highest seat of justice,” Kennedy said. “That’s a lesson this country should not have had to learn twice. We need an impeachment inquiry on Kavanaugh. We need court reform. And we need justice for survivors we have failed.”
https://twitter.com/RepJoeKennedy/status/1173986267522043906
