Late Saturday night, Al Franken “released” a list of questions for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. There’s just one problem, though: Al Franken won’t be able to question Kavanaugh, because he’s no longer a sitting United States senator.
Franken, who has not changed his Twitter handle from “U.S. Senator Al Franken,” despite resigning from office amid a series of sexual harassment allegations, announced his opposition to Kavanaugh on Saturday in a post to Facebook.
When Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I wish I could be there. Because I have some questions I’d love to see him answer. Here they are: https://t.co/hLGuu4QW3w
— U.S. Senator Al Franken (@SenFranken) July 14, 2018
What follows is a fever dream in which Franken “nails” Brett Kavanaugh for a comment Kavanaugh made during his official introduction last Monday, suggesting that President Donald Trump presided over a thorough and extensive vetting process, and that “no president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input.”
Franken concludes by noting that he “knows” precisely what would happen in the exchange: that Kavanaugh would reveal he was selected “through a shoddy, disgraceful process” conducted using resources from those nefarious, shady conservative groups, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, and that Kavanaugh has worked, from the beginning, as if pushed by a vision of a future where Donald Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court, to cover his tracks as an utterly partisan official.
“The truth is, for the last generation, conservatives have politicized the Court, and the courts. Kavanaugh is the very model of a young, arch-conservative judge who has been groomed for moments like this one precisely because conservative activists know that he will issue expansive, activist rulings to further their agenda. He has spent his whole career carefully cultivating a reputation as a serious and thoughtful legal scholar—but he wouldn’t have been on that list if he weren’t committed to the right-wing cause,” Franken writes.
Many of the comments on Franken’s post urge him to return to the Senate, but the post itself makes clear Franken’s contribution to the federal lawmaking process hasn’t been missed.