The desire to re-investigate Brett Kavanaugh and remove him from the Supreme Court has been floating around on the left ever since he was confirmed in 2018. Way back in January of 2019 Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, a freshman Democrat, was claiming the Judiciary Committee would take up a new Kavanaugh investigation based on claims he had perjured himself. That claim was based on a complaint filed earlier by a Democratic SuperPAC.

The perjury complaint was nonsense as even Vox pointed out at the time. “Do Kavanaugh’s inaccurate statements rise to the level of perjury? Did he commit a federal crime? I put the question to several legal scholars, and the reply I received was generally: ‘no.'”

But the left never lets reality get in the way of a good witch hunt. In March of this year, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse made some news by claiming the FBI’s background investigation of Kavanaugh in 2018 was “fake.” Then in July Democrats claimed they had just discovered the FBI had received 4,500 tips about Kavanaugh and demanded to know how many of the tips were relevant. They were moving toward a new investigation. Lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford went further, claiming the FBI had “hid the ball.”

Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford: The FBI's Brett Kavanaugh inquiry was "a sham and a major institutional failure."

"Because the FBI and Trump's White House Counsel hid the ball on this, we do not know how many of those 4,500 tips were consequential."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 23, 2021

But it turns out this was all nonsense. The FBI report, which Democrats had access to at the time, contained a summary of all 4,500 tips. There’s a reason no one ever heard anything significant coming from those tips. They were all nonsense:

Mike Davis, who served as chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Kavanaugh hearings, tells National Review that there was a summary of all 4,500 tips in the FBI’s report, which was available to all 100 U.S. senators.

“They printed out the entire tip-line summary,” says Davis. “Every senator had full access to read those things if they wanted to.”…

“Every whack-job in the world called into that thing. That’s why there were 4,500 [tips],” says Davis. “Grassley’s team went through the entire tip-line. It was nonsense.” Davis worked under then-chairman Chuck Grassley on the committee and now runs the Article 3 Project, a conservative group that focuses on the judiciary.

A Republican senator who reviewed the FBI’s report confirms Davis’s description of the tip-line summary. “There was nothing in there . . . nothing anywhere providing a shred of corroboration” of an existing allegation or a new allegation, the senator tells National Review.

So having tried and failed to revive the idea of re-investigating Kavanaugh more than once, it probably won’t come as a surprise that someone is trying it again today. This time the push came from a Substack post titled “Breaking Brett.” The argument is that Kavanaugh needs to be investigated and then removed from the Supreme Court because he’s suspicious and also because Democrats would love it.

There is a clear playbook to removing him from the bench. And this is what must be done. Not because we don’t like his politics, although we don’t; not because we think he’s an asshole, although he is; not because he had a hissy fit at his confirmation hearing, although he did. No, we must remove him because at least twice in his life, some unknown entity endowed him with major infusions of cash, and Kavanaugh lied, under oath, about the provenance of that cash (he said it came from his Thrift Savings Plan)—and about several other things besides. He’s compromised, six ways from Sunday, and we simply can’t have that on the Supreme Court, no matter which way he votes…

Yes, this is a difficult task. Yes, it requires a coordination of effort. Yes, it may well lead nowhere. Kavanaugh’s statements during his hearing may not rise to the legal standard of perjury. His Daddy Warbucks father may well have been the mystery benefactor. Kavanaugh and Judge may both have been too shit-housed to remember what happened with Dr. Ford all those years ago. But, again, it is the responsibility of our government to determine this once and for all. We deserve to know if one of our nine justices owned. We deserve not to be gaslighted about this.

A Kavanaugh investigation would not only be the right thing to do; it would also be enormously popular. Like, Harry Potter popular. Sistine Chapel popular. “Stayin’ Alive”-in-December-1977 popular. And not in a tepid, half-assed sort of way. Remember how those women tracked down Jeff Flake and shouted at him in the elevator? All of that righteous anger is still there—simmering, but boiling hot. The horrible Texas antichoice law has already turned up the heat. And the recent revelation that Wray buried the 4,500 tips gives political cover. A savvy politician could harness all of that powerful collective energy by simply pushing the right buttons…

If Kavanaugh were a liberal justice with the same sketchy background, and the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House, there would be no question of investigating this. Why don’t the Dems exhibit the same ruthlessness, clarity of purpose and moral obligation to their voters and the American people? Why always the proverbial knife at the gun-fight?

It’s not going to convince anyone but the already convinced, but the point is there are enough of them, especially on Twitter, to get this dumb idea trending today. I’m not sure this pattern is ever going to end. When Kavanaugh is starting his third decade on the Supreme Court there will still be some lefty crank out there claiming he perjured himself and demanding a new investigation of those mysterious FBI tips. And there will still be progressives on Twitter thinking that’s a very smart idea.

My own take is that I hope Democrats continue to push this along with the equally bad idea of packing the court. Both efforts have an electoral backfire built into them. Apparently the far left didn’t learn anything from their surprise House losses last year or the collapse of Nina Turner’s campaign more recently. If we can just get them to double down on defunding the police, the 2022 elections are going to be another big surprise for them.