(CNN)As senators grappled with how to handle the explosive allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Dianne Feinstein found herself in the center of the political storm.
As the sole Senate confidant of the woman accusing Kavanaugh, she was singled out Monday on the right by President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — who questioned the eleventh-hour revelation — while being criticized from the left by her upstart Democratic challenger, Kevin de León, for keeping such serious allegations under wraps.
The criticism was an ironic twist in the lengthy political career of California’s senior senator, who was the first female senator elected to represent the Golden State and one who has long been heralded as a champion of women’s rights.
Ever the enigma, Feinstein — who was elected in 1992’s “Year of the Woman,” in the wake of the Anita Hill hearings — chose to keep secret the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Kavanaugh pinned her down on a bed at a high school party in the 1980s, and clapped his hand over her mouth as he tried to assault her. Kavanaugh maintains that the incident never happened.
In an election year dominated by the fallout from the #MeToo movement, and at a time when the Senate was deciding the fate of the most consequential Supreme Court nominee in decades, Feinstein resolutely stood by her promise of confidentiality to Ford.
Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member of the judiciary committee, did not raise the issue with Kavanaugh in their private meeting. She did not tell her judiciary committee colleagues about the matter until The Intercept reported details of the incident last week. At that point, Feinstein forwarded the letter detailing Ford’s account to the FBI and asked for an investigation.
As the story was unfolding last week, a number of Democratic operatives privately said they were stunned Feinstein had unilaterally decided not to share the information with her Democratic colleagues — depriving them of the chance to question Kavanaugh during the judiciary committee hearings. Had the allegations not leaked to the press, they noted, Kavanaugh might have sailed through the confirmation process without having to answer to the charges.
California State Senate President Kevin de León, Feinstein’s Democratic challenger in November, accused her of a “failure of leadership” for waiting “nearly three months to hand this disqualifying document” — the July 30 letter — “over to the federal authorities.”
On Monday, the Republicans piled on. Trump questioned why Feinstein did not confront Kavanaugh about the accusations in their private meeting.
“One thing I will say is that, as I understand it, Judge Kavanaugh spent quite a bit of time with Sen. Feinstein, and it wasn’t even brought up at that meeting,” Trump said Monday. “And she had this information. So you would have thought, certainly, that she would have brought it up at the meeting, not wait until everything is finished and then have to start a…
