Feinstein attacks his treatment of Kavanaugh's harassment complaint

SAN FRANCISCO – California Senator Kevin de León, an aggressive Progressive defying Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Accused him of "gross misconduct" in the treatment of a letter from an unnamed woman Judge Brett Kavanaugh, candidate for the Supreme Court.

De Leon, in an interview granted Friday to POLITICO, criticized Feinstein for not raising the issue, while Kavanaugh had appeared before the judicial committee for last week.

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Her performance shows how "she has historically demonstrated that she was not willing to fight Republicans," he said. "She has been very passive in her approach to the Supreme Court's most important candidate in a generation," showing "a great detachment from the realities" of women's experiences in many communities.

At the moment Kavanaugh's confirmation potentially threatens "the woman's right to choose, the right to vote and civil rights," added De León, other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee "are looking for an opportunity to delay hearings. ". The content of the letter, he said, has raised critical doubts about the candidate. "It was that – and she was sitting on it for three months," he said.

Feinstein, in a statement on Friday, defended his way of dealing with Kavanaugh's complaint.

"Senator Feinstein has received information about Judge Kavanaugh through a third party," the statement said. "The senator took these allegations seriously and felt that they should be public.However, the woman in question made it clear that she did not want this information to be public." sexual misconduct, it is essential to protect the identity of the victim wishes to remain anonymous, and the senator has done in this case. "

Former Democratic political strategist Katie Merrill described De León's proof of his "desperation" in a race where he fell behind Feinstein in double digits.

"It is not at all surprising that Senator Feinstein respected and understood that a victim of potential sexual abuse was asking for confidentiality and was reluctant to come forward," she said. "She understood that we are dealing with a Supreme Court candidate who may have committed a crime," she said.

"Kevin de León wants to be a showhorse and California voters want a workhorse – and that's what he's proven for 25 years," added Merrill.

But de Leon took over the 11-hour fire storm of the Supreme Court. Compared to Sens. Kamala Harris from California, Cory Booker from New Jersey, Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut and other Democrats from the Judiciary Committee, all of whom pushed back to Kavanaugh and "made us proud to be Democrats" at the hearing, member was complacent, passive and dumb. His perceived seniority was not visible – they lacked action. "

In an earlier written statement, the senator wrote that "to be clear, the anonymity of the person who wrote this letter must be protected at all costs." But he added, "its contents reveal a report go from the front to confirm the greatest threat to our constitutional and human rights in a generation.

De Leon, the author of the controversial California law on "The State of the Sanctuary", is engaged in a fierce battle to deny Feinstein his fifth full term. He has repeatedly called on Democrats to use hand-to-hand tactics to derail Kavanaugh's appointment, which Democrats – including Feinstein – have declared a serious threat to the future of Roe v. Wade.

During the last auditions, Feinstein drew the sharpest pikes of De León when she seemed to apologize for dozens of protesters who interrupted the hearings on several occasions, telling her colleagues that she was "sorry for the circumstances, but we overcome them."

"The committee does not need any courtesy in the US Senate," de Leon said at the San Diego Union Tribune. He said that Kavanaugh's appointment was an example of action by the Trump administration that "requires extraordinary efforts that are out of the box and not the same old Washington playbook from yesterday."

And he tweeted: "We should congratulate the protesters and stay outside with them, without excuses for their actions. We need a California senator who will stand up and #RESIST not #ASSIST. On the first day of the hearings, he tweeted: "70 people arrested and not a single @SenateDems. We must change tactics.

De Leon recently gained the support of the executive committee of the California Democratic Party on Feinstein, in part because left-wing activists have complained of being too disconnected from California's solidly blue progressive values.

Feinstein, who was first elected in the "Women's Year" in 1992, far exceeded De León by $ 10 million in the bank, compared with $ 672,000 at the end of the first quarter. She also had a comfortable lead of 44 to 11% on De León during the June primary, when she won all of California's districts.

But with only a few weeks before the elections, a recent poll by Probolsky Research, a Republican firm, suggested that its lead over the former Senate government had risen to 8 points – 37-29 percent – with 34 percent of voters still undecided.