Steve King (file photo)
Republican Congressman Steve King says there was no need for additional F.B.I. interviews about Christine Blasey Ford’s abuse allegations against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“If we are at a place in America where an unsubstantiated allegation will prevent a person whose entire career has pointed in the ascendancy, then we’re at a sad place indeed,” King says. “And that means there’s no one that would be able to defend themselves from an unsubstantiated allegation.”
King talked this past weekend to an official in the Department of Justice about the F.B.I. interviews with people who had already provided the F.B.I. information about Kavanaugh and Ford.
“If anyone contradicts themselves, then they’re subject to the felony of perjury, so they don’t expect there will be any new information that will come out,” King says. “…I think it was unnecessary. It just stretched this process out.”
King says he thinks Ford believes what she testified to in a Senate committee last week, but King says Kavanaugh “was even more convincing” in his denial. King calls the hearing “shameful.”
“We’re at a place in America where an individual with a stellar career all of his life and a stellar reputation all of his life, including that high school period that there’s an allegation in, other than that allegation, everything about his life points to a person who has lived nearly every day on a path of excellence to get to the position where he could be seated on the United States Supreme Court,” King says.
A mere accusation, he says, shouldn’t be considered proof that a person is guilty.
“I don’t know who could defend themselves from such a charge and that means we’re all subject to it,” King says. “…If we are going to disregard facts and allow them to be trumped by someone’s feelings, then our society is devolving toward third-world tactics. We cannot ascend as a civilization if we’re going to accept an allegation itself as irrefutable evidence.”
King says Kavanaugh has been subjected to a “high-tech lynching 2.0.” That’s a reference to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ remark at his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing after he was accused of misconduct by Anita Hill. King says things have evolved now to where sexual harassment is being defined by the person who makes the complaint.
J. D. Scholten, the Democrat who’s challenging King’s bid for a ninth term in the U.S. House, cited King’s recent remarks that ‘you don’t know if you’re an harasser until you’ve been accused.”
Scholten said: “By that logic, if you are rob a bank, you don’t know it until you get caught…I was appalled by Steve King’s comments…It’s attitudes like this that make sexual harassment so prevalent in today’s society. What Rep. King doesn’t seem to realize, is that you’re a harasser the moment you do something to someone without their consent.”
(By Dennis Morrice, KLEM, Le Mars)