Her legal team doesn’t seem to understand the law too well. But they understand politics just fine.

Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford just informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that they won’t be turning over evidence concerning her allegations that Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her in high school. They will, they say, give the FBI copies of her therapist’s notes and recordings of her polygraph test. Just not to Congress, which has the advice and consent role that will determine whether Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court.

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"Dr. Ford is prepared to provide those documents to the FBI when she is interviewed. We have not yet heard from the FBI about scheduling an interview with her," Debra Katz and Lisa Banks wrote in a letter to Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Except no, that’s not how this works.

Congress has supreme oversight authority, and it can compel an individual to testify or turn over information needed to fulfill its investigative powers. Lawmakers can hold someone in criminal contempt if they refuse to do so according to 2 U.S. Code § 192:

Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee of either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.


Congress is not subservient to the FBI. After all, as Brit Hume pointed out, it is the Senate that has the power and the responsibility to offer advice and consent. They are the seat of power in this democracy, and they have the authority to make Ford turn over the documents under penalty of law. Of course, this would require less anemic lawmakers.

And in this way, yes, this is exactly how it works.

Ford’s lawyers are on the wrong side of the law but on the right side of politics. They are confident that Congress will be too sheepish to actually exercise its power. Long ago, lawmakers learned to cede their power to faceless bureaucrats that never have to stand for election rather than face the consequences that might come from tough decisions. It is no different with the FBI.

The impetuous vortex of "Federalist 48" has been plugged. Partisan attorneys are playing Congress and flirting with a constitutional crisis. Will the Senate do anything about it?