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Twenty-six years after winning a Senate seat in the "Year of the Woman," Dianne Feinstein is a central figure in deciding the fate of Brett M. Kavanaugh, whose appointment to the Supreme Court is in danger. Aggression when they were in high school.
Feinstein was a lightning rod for President Trump's vicious criticism and the quieter frustration of some Democrats after revealing that she had received a letter in July from the woman that she did not share with her Senate colleagues and the federal police until last week.
The episode has put the 85-year-old California senator, who is seeking a sixth term in November, in the midst of an explosive, explosive cultural, political and social storm charged by the #MeToo movement's forces and the Trump presidency. .
As Kavanaugh advances and denies the allegations, Feinstein undergoes a careful review of his career. Trump accused her of timing her bomb revelation to sink her candidate.
"When Senator Feinstein met Judge Kavanaugh for a long time – a long, long meeting – she had this letter. Why did not she raise the issue? Said Trump. "Why did not the Democrats talk about it? Because they obstruct and because they resist. This is the name of their campaign against me.
Now, Feinstein faces an important moment as one of the most powerful women in the country. As a senior official of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feinstein is helping his party prepare for an unprecedented public hearing Monday in which Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, were invited to testify.
But as she traces the next steps, Feinstein is faced with questions about her recent – including her decision to wait weeks before sharing Ford's letter, issuing only an encrypted statement last Thursday, when its existence was leaked . The revelation occurred almost a week after the end of Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings.
"I'm going to tell you that I'm glad we're going to hear and get to the bottom of things. It would have been nice to do it before, "said Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Who will run for re-election in a state that Trump won in 2016." But you know, I was not there his shoes. "
Democratic Senators of the Judiciary Committee were lukewarm about Feinstein. "She did her best," said Senator Mazie Hirono (Hawaii). "I can not blame him," said Senator Kamala D. Harris (California). "Extremely Difficult Circumstances," noted Senator Richard J. Durbin (Ill.)
In private, some Democrat senators wanted Feinstein to come to them earlier with this allegation, according to a Democrat who knew the internal dynamics of the Senate directly. The Democrat spoke of the condition of anonymity to be frank.
It was late July that Feinstein received Ford's letter detailing the allegations of several decades ago against Kavanaugh. Ford is a constituent of Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), Who relayed the letter to Feinstein.
Ford insisted on confidentiality. It was only at a private meeting last Wednesday, after a report from Intercept, that Feinstein revealed the letter to his Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee. In a Washington Post article published Sunday, Ford told its story publicly for the first time.
In the Post article, Ford alleged that Kavanaugh had drugged her on a bed on her back, tried it and put her hand on her mouth to choke her cries at a party in the early 1980s, when that they were in high school.
[California professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault]
Feinstein says she has sought to honor Ford's confidentiality claim, and Ford's attorney, Debra Katz, says she thinks Feinstein did that. On Tuesday, Feinstein said he had explored ways to quietly investigate the charge.
"We were looking for a way to investigate by an outside investigator," she told reporters. His spokesperson, Tom Mentzer, said his staff had spoken with the Ethics Committee about whether the Judiciary Committee could hire an independent board to assist an anonymous person.
Officials informed the assistants that the Senate Rules Committee should approve such a request, Mentzer said, which would have meant alerting the top Republican Senators and thus going against Ford's request to remain confidential.
"I did not know if this woman would show up or not," said Feinstein.
The Republicans remain determined to confirm Kavanaugh, and in their efforts to win the war of public opinion, they have chosen Fainstein, and by extension the Democrats, as villains, repeatedly arguing that they were deliberately leading the process of appointing Kavanaugh.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Said Tuesday that Feinstein "had decided to launch it at the end," referring simply to her as a member of the committee.
"I do not know why she sat on this letter as long as she did," said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the third Republican senator. "It seems to me, at least, that if these allegations, if they took them seriously, they would have tried more to include him in the discussion" at Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings.
But Feinstein's decision to keep the charge out of his own party, while the Liberals were exerting tremendous pressure to defeat Kavanaugh and the moderate Democratic senators, wondered whether he should support it, which has triggered a second reflection. Now, many want to turn the page.
"I will not go back and go back on that," said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Who represents a Republican state and is expected to be re-elected in 2020. "I just think we need to deal where we are now, not where we could have been. "
Even before Ford's accusation, Feinstein's navigation of Kavanaugh's candidacy had been controversial. After apologizing to Kavanaugh for the protesters in the room during his confirmation hearings, Brian Fallon, the leader of a liberal anti-Kavanaugh group, termed it "ridiculous".
Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992, when the number of women elected to the Senate tripled by voting the year following Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, despite allegations of sexual harassment by a subordinate , Anita Hill.
In November, Feinstein's challenger was Kevin de León, a state legislator on his left who finished second away from the primary of all California parties. He criticized Feinstein last week for "the failure of his leadership" and asked why she had been waiting to give information on this accusation to the FBI.
The Democrat familiar with the Senate's internal dynamics said that at the meeting at which Feinstein informed his Democratic colleagues of the letter last week, they had promptly encouraged him to send him back to the federal authorities. She did it last Wednesday.
Now, Feinstein, like many Democrats, is calling on the FBI to deepen the allegations before the Senate conducts its hearing next week. Republicans have not been receptive to such a delay.
Some Democrats have privately asked how much progress has been made in the Judiciary Committee, even though a woman – Feinstein – sits as a Democrat. They cited Hill's statement last week calling on the group to develop a new process to investigate complaints of sexual harassment and assault.
Feinstein was an attraction for Capitol Hill this week. While her assistants and collaborators sought to transport her efficiently to and from meetings and votes, she stopped to talk to crowds of reporters patiently, sometimes putting her assistants out of the way. comments that sometimes cause confusion.
While answering questions outside the Senate on Tuesday, an assistant reminded her that she had two votes to go, but she continued to speak with reporters. Seconds later, the Senate minority leader, Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y), passed and intervened.
"Dianne, did you vote?" Asked he. She said that she had not done it and she entered the Senate chamber with him.
Feinstein also created some uncertainty with her comments Tuesday about whether she believed Ford's account was entirely credible. She told reporters at the end of the day, "I think she's credible."
Tom Hamburger, Gabriel Pogrund, Seung Kim Min and Erica Werner contributed to this report.
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