Below is the text of an email just sent to Senators Grassley, Flake, Collins, and Manchin. (I had already emailed Feinstein and Murkowski something similar, and didn’t want to duplicate. ) If anyone else thinks this is a good idea, please feel free to re-use it. Or give me a signal boost on social media; I’m not on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever.
If Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is confirmed today, and he proceeds from that position to knowingly jeopardize national security or undermine the functioning of the checks and balances of the U.S. Government—then these Senators can’t say they weren’t warned. I told them there was evidence of an important nature that they hadn’t heard. It’s all here. (It was all out there before, but no one saw it.) Putting the national interest first right now means pausing this process to let the Senate Judiciary Committee evaluate these important facts before voting on this nomination.
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New info: Evidence Kavanaugh knowingly jeopardized national security
Dear Senator Grassley,
The Senate Judiciary Committee needs to hear new evidence on Judge Kavanaugh relating to national security. If there is an emergency provision of some kind to suspend voting for this purpose, then it would be appropriate to apply it today. This email explains why. I’ve also tried to explain on my website: www.verawil.de, in a series of essays about polygraphs.
I’m a PhD polygraph researcher whose polygraph open records case Kavanaugh decided in 2016. A summary of my points on this matter is on my website here: https://verawil.de/2018/10/five-posts-on-polygraphs-a-summary.
These materials show that the evidence suggests Judge Kavanaugh knowingly jeopardized national security as a federal judge. Because he testified to you that polygraphs are unreliable. But when I asked the government for polygraph program records that could have revealed data important for advancing science in the interests of national security and other public interests—such as insights about polygraph program bias, abuse, waste, fraud, inefficacy, and corruption—he denied my request.
It’s difficult to reconcile Kavanaugh’s belief that polygraphs are unreliable, with his ruling that letting researchers see polygraph program records would be detrimental to law enforcement. Because if law enforcement is using a tool that is widely known to be unreliable, then it would seem that strengthening the science around such tools—as my research has done—might help to strengthen law enforcement. But I tried to do that, and Kavanaugh stopped me. My research was in the national interest. His ruling was not.
As a federal judge in this case, Kavanaugh failed to check abusive executive branch power like the independent judiciary must. This undermined the U.S. government from working as designed. It is dangerous for American democracy to install a judge who does not seem to understand how checks and balances are supposed to work.
In all this discussion about other things, something really important has been lost. Something that I think your fellow Senators who care about national security, and the integrity of checks and balances in the U.S. government working as designed, need to hear. Please refocus the work of the Senate where it belongs. Hear my evidence. The facts here really matter before this vote, and they have not been heard.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards,
Dr. Vera Wilde, PhD
