October 5, 2018

Dear Senator Collins:

Your decision to vote for Judge Kavanaugh is a slap in the face to the people of Maine, the majority of whom oppose him. Your vote for Kavanaugh will be a disgrace to the United States Senate.

In your speech today, you said: "The president nominated Brett Kavanaugh on July 9th. Within moments of that announcement, special interest groups raced to be the first to oppose him, including one organization that didn't even bother to fill in the judge's name on its prewritten press release."

Your colleague, Senator Orrin Hatch, asked then-President Obama to nominate Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Obama took Senator Hatch's advice and nominated him. Immediately afterward, your colleague, Senator Mitch McConnell, decided that the seat would be left open for the year before the next Presidential election, and it didn't matter whom Obama nominated. McConnell said: "One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, 'You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.'" Senator McCain then said that, if Hillary Clinton was elected, the Senate would wait until she left office to confirm any new Justices! To condemn the special interest groups' opposition to Kavanaugh after the way you and your party treated Garland is blatant hypocrisy. Have you no shame?

You stated that "Judge Kavanaugh has been unequivocal in his belief that no president is above the law." Senator, come on. A few moments after making that proclamation in his hearings, Kavanaugh strongly implied that the President does not have to obey subpoenas. A few minutes later, Kavanaugh was asked if the President could pardon himself, and Kavanaugh refused to answer the question. According to ThinkProgress, "In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote an article for a law journal in which he argued that presidents should not be subject to any sort of investigations while in office." Kavanaugh only paid lip service to the rule of law. Since he thinks the President does not have to answer subpoenas, cannot be the subject of investigations, and can pardon himself, Kavanaugh clearly believes that the president IS above the law.

You said: "One concern I frequently heard was that the judge would be likely to eliminate the Affordable Care Act's vital protections for people with preexisting conditions. I disagree with this contention." Senator Collins, you disagree with the facts. The Washington Post reported: "Among the things that distinguish [Kavanaugh] from the other finalists on Trump’s list is his expansive view of executive power — he argued that a president could decline to enforce a statute such as Obamacare even if a court upholds its constitutionality — and his dissent in a 2011 case in which others on his appellate court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act."

You also said that Kavanaugh believes the Constitution guarantees a woman's right to an abortion and that he doesn't intend to overturn Roe v. Wade. Senator, you've been duped. Such naiveté is beneath you as a human being, as a woman, and as a United States Senator. You claim that Judge Kavanaugh told you that "someone who believes that the importance of precedent has been rooted in the Constitution would follow long established precedent, except in those rare circumstances where a decision is grievously wrong or deeply inconsistent with the law. Those are Judge Kavanaugh's phrases." Senator, Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent to the Garza v. Hargan case that the government has a moral duty to try and prevent abortions -- even (as in that case) when a teenage girl became pregnant from a rape. Senator, Kavanaugh thinks Roe v. Wade IS one of those cases where a Supreme Court "decision is grievously wrong." How can you not see that?

Kavanaugh has the right to his opinion, but he does not have the right to use his power as a judge to force teenage girls to carry a rapist's child to term.

Professor Christine Blasey Ford told the Senate of a time when she and Kavanaugh were both teenagers and Kavanaugh -- then drunk -- assaulted and tried to rape her. You then turned to Julie Swetnik's tale. "I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape." This is not what Swetnik said. In her statement, she said that both she and Kavanaugh attended parties in high school where the boys tried get the girls drunk so the boys could take advantage of them. Swetnik did not say she witnessed Kavanaugh participating in a gang rape -- only that Kavanaugh knew that such things were happening.

In your speech, you said "That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness." You are absolutely right that the accused are innocent until proven guilty -- but Kavanaugh is not on trial here. He has been nominated to a position of awesome responsibility. The question is not of his guilt or innocence, but of his qualifications to be a Supreme Court Justice. Regardless of whether the allegations of sexual misconduct are accurate or not, Judge Kavanaugh's own calendars and yearbooks demonstrate conclusively that he was a binge drinker as a young man. During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh blatantly lied under oath when he claimed he wasn't. Aside from his own yearbooks and calendars, his heavy drinking has been confirmed by multiple witnesses, including Deborah Ramirez, Lynne Brookes, Chad Ludington, Elizabeth Swisher, and James Roche.

You continued: "Professor Ford's lifelong friend, Leland Keyser, indicated that under penalty of felony she does not remember that party." You are splitting hairs and grasping at straws. Ms. Keyser says she believes Blasey. What she said was that she did not witness the alleged attack because she was in a different room at the time! Senator, you dismissed Blasey's story as lacking corroborating evidence. As Nathan Robinson wrote in Current Affairs, Kavanaugh's own documents provide all the evidence we need that Blasey is telling the truth and that Kavanaugh is lying.

Notwithstanding, you then said: "To them I pledge to do all that I can to ensure that their daughters and granddaughters never share their experiences." Senator: think about this for a moment. In the last two years, Paul Ryan and other members of your party tried to pass laws legalizing discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions. If those bills had passed, people who have paid into health insurance all their lives could have their providers refuse to cover them if they got sick. Moreover, Speaker Ryan and his allies tried to make surviving a sexual assault a "pre-existing condition" - so if a teenage girl were brutally attacked by a violent sex offender she'd never seen before, beaten within an inch of her life, and impregnated against her will when she was unconscious, she would lose her health insurance for the rest of her life if she reported the crime. Moreover, as I mentioned above, Kavanaugh once wrote that the government has a moral duty to prevent abortions, even in cases of teenage girls impregnated against their will by a rapist. Senator, if Speaker Ryan's bill becomes law, it will doubtlessly be challenged in court, and Judge Kavanaugh will rule on its constitutionality. How do you think he will rule? Senator, today, only a third of rapes are reported to the police -- partially because women do not want to be mocked and belittled the way Donald Trump demeaned Professor Blasey. If Ryan and Kavanaugh get their way, they will make it impossible for anyone to ever report a rape. You aren't ensuring that the survivors' "daughters and granddaughters never share their experiences." You are ensuring that they will.

Senator, you said that leaking Professor Blasey's letter was "unconscionable." Your pledge to vote for Judge Kavanaugh is unconscionable. You are putting a perjurer and a misogynist on the Supreme Court. You said you plan to vote for him "so that public confidence in our judiciary and our highest court is restored." What your vote will do, Senator, is tell every woman who has ever been attacked by a powerful man that the court system is not on their side. Your vote will legitimize Donald Trump leading a cheering crowd in chanting for the victim to be locked up. Your vote to confirm Kavanaugh will destroy public confidence our judiciary and our Supreme Court -- not restore it.

Senator Collins, the vote to confirm Kavanaugh is tomorrow. It is not too late to change your mind. The people of Maine oppose Kavanaugh, and will remember your vote in 2020.

Yours sincerely,
C. Colvin