Attorney Michael Avenatti stymied Democrats’ attempts to derail confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Democratic senators and aides told CNN.
“Democrats and the country would have been better off if Mr. Avenatti spent his time on his Iowa vanity project rather than meddling in Supreme Court fights,” a top Democratic Senate aide told CNN ahead of Saturday’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
“His involvement set us back, absolutely,” said the aide, referring to Avenatti’s fledgling 2020 presidential campaign.
Avenatti, who represents porn star Stormy Daniels, entered the Kavanaugh foray as an attorney for Julie Swetnick, a Washington, D.C. woman who claimed that Kavanaugh was present at house parties in the early 1980s were girls were gang raped.
Avenatti pushed Swetnick’s case at his cable TV mainstays, CNN and MSNBC, but ultimately failed to produce the witnesses he claimed would come forward to support his client’s case. . . .
While Kavanaugh appeared on the ropes after Ford’s story emerged, conservatives rallied around him in response to the Swetnick allegations.
Asked about Avenatti’s involvement in the Kavanaugh case, Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, suggested that the attorney distracted from Democrats’ mission to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
“Well you know at some point there were a lot of folks coming forward making all sorts of accusations,” Peters told CNN. “It turns it into a circus atmosphere and certainly that’s not where we should be.”