The Avenatti playbook

Mark Judge–who was unwillingly made a central figure in the circus that the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings became–learned quite a bit about the Left’s playbook.

Unfortunately, he had to learn “on the job,” so to speak, as his reputation was smeared along with Judge Kavanaugh’s in a thankfully vain attempt to tube his nomination to the bench. As collateral damage in the drone strike on Kavanaugh’s reputation, he got quite a few scars, but with the wounds came enduring lessons.

The one that stands out to me is what he calls the Left’s “Avenatti Playbook,” which they not only used to smear Kavanaugh but continue to use against the sitting Justices. After the 2018 hearings Judge warned his friends that the Left wasn’t done with its strategy; they were going to use the very same tactics against the sitting Justices on the Supreme Court.

Nobody believed him then, but he has proven to be prophetic.

It’s 2023 now, and leftists are indeed using the exact same tactics they used against Kavanaugh and me to assail the Supreme Court itself. I’ve hammered home again and again how they were going to deploy it. Many of the same conservatives who kept telling me to move on are now expressing shock about what’s happening. Welcome to the party, guys.

As was the case with us, the left’s plan has just four steps for crushing constitutionalist justices and hijacking the Court:

• Do opposition research. Dig up some apparent dirt on the justices, even if it is not convincing or relevant.
• Feed it to the media, who will shout it through a bullhorn.
• Call for subpoenas — even of the Chief Justice himself, if he won’t play ball. Haul them up and humiliate them in the (Democrat-run) Senate.
• Impeach the conservative justice, or pack the court with new, compliant members.

Sound familiar? This is exactly what is being done to Justice Thomas right now. And, of course, Biden and company have been preparing the ground for expanding the Court for 2 years now.

I wrote about the latest hit on Clarence Thomas yesterday–the Affair of the Christmas Party. It is a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, and a scandal as dangerous to the Republic as anything Tom Cruise battles in his Mission Impossible movies.

The point of these stories is not to have any one of them break the political back of the opponent, but rather to throw out so many accusations that people begin to wonder whether something is there. It is to attack the character and integrity of the opponent.

Few people believed Kavanaugh participated in a gang rape, but then again…there were so many accusations, weren’t there? Maybe something is there. After all, the media keeps talking about it, and who wants a rapist at the Supreme Court?

The left’s playbook was revealed at a live symposium recently held in Washington, D.C. Dhalia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern of Slate, Elie Mystal of the Nation, and Jay Willis of the leftist Balls and Strikes website, all said that their coverage of the Supreme Court over the years had been terrible and needs to change. Calling it “a wake-up call” and the result of “the sinking feeling that we’ve been doing it all wrong,” the speakers argued that they have been too deferential to the Supreme Court and its traditions.

Instead of passively “translating” for readers the text of SCOTUS rulings, reporters now need to cover the court with the aggression that is usually used when reporters cover Rep. Lauren Boebert or Donald Trump. Or when they try and destroy ordinary Americans who don’t toe the line on the gay and trans agenda.

You get the idea: the media has to wage war against the Court because, after all, the Court is now their enemy. For decades the Left either owned the Court or held enough power to defend its territory. Now that it is losing territory the Court must be destroyed. And the way to destroy it is to destroy its members.

Look at the Thomas Christmas Party story. Do you seriously believe that no other Justice has Christmas parties where former clerks toss money into a hat to cover the costs? Did The Guardian try to find out if this is just how it has been done for a hundred years or so?

No. Because the facts are not the point: getting Thomas was.

It is the art of the smear. It was what was done to Trump–he gets hookers to pee on beds! Throw up enough of these ridiculous charges and the cumulative effect is devastating. At least it can be.

The Avenatti playbook, still in use. Is he smiling over in prison? (Avenatti appeared on MSNBC with Lithwick during the Kavanaugh hearings as a guest.)

At the symposium, Dahlia Lithwick concluded: “We cover the institution like it’s made of magic and ponies. We need to adjust to so we can do our job or speaking truth to power, and the justices can do their job of learning how to listen.” Not to the American founders or even its people, but to its elites … like Lithwick.

I HATE that “speaking truth to power” nostrum. The MSM licks the boots of the powerful if they like them. We get endless stories about who rents rooms at Trump hotels, but a crack-smoking hooker screwing degenerate gets millions of foreign dollars from the Chinese Communist Party and distributes them to every Biden family member on Earth, save his own daughter, and the press makes it a story about a “father’s love for his son.”

Barf.

This is raw, disgusting politics. Brought to you by the people who tried to elevate Michael Avenatti to the White House.