Old John Pickering lies a'mouldering in his grave in the Old North Cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and he's done so since April of 1805. Pickering was a federal district judge for the district of New Hampshire. He also was drunk a great deal of the time, and more than half-crazy. The latter was used by his supporters to explain the former, as a copy of the Congressional Record indicates.

During the proceedings on the articles Mr. Samuel Tenney, of New Hampshire, called for the reading of several depositions to show that Judge Pickering had sustained a respectable character and that his recent con- duct had arisen from insanity. In reply Mr. Nicholson said that the House had determined that they would impeach, and it was therefore the present duty to furnish the Senate with the articles. Mr. Nicholson further said that he was informed from respectable sources that Judge Pickering was habitually intoxicated. The articles were agreed to without division.

And he was impeached, in March of 1803, by the U.S. House of Representatives, the first federal official to be impeached under what was then still a new Constitution. The Articles of Impeachment centered on a case regarding a merchant ship called the Eliza, but they also concerned Pickering's behavior on the bench, which was said to be, well, erratic. Article IV explained:

That whereas for the due, faithful, and impartial administration of justice, temperance and sobriety are essential qualities in the character of a judge, yet the said John Pickering, being a man of loose morals and intemperate habits, on the 11th and 12th days of November, in the year 1802, being then judge of the district court in and for the district of New Hampshire, did appear on the bench of the said court for the administration of justice in a state of total intoxication, produced by the free and intemperate use of intoxicating liquors; and did then and there frequently, in a most profane and indecent manner, invoke the name of the Supreme Being, to the evil example of all the good citizens of the United States; and was then and there guilty of other high misdemeanors, disgraceful to his own character as a judge and degrading to the honor of the United States.

That there were politics involved in removing crazy old drunk John Pickering from the bench is undeniable. The Federalists were passing from power—for good, as it turned out—and they were trying to cement their legacy in the government by packing the federal judiciary. The rising Democratic-Republicans, led by President Thomas Jefferson, were trying to find ways both within and without the Constitution to keep the courts out of the hands of a zombie political party that would be really, most sincerely dead within a decade or so. (The landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review and that Jefferson's side lost, was part of this ongoing battle.) Pickering, of course, because he was a crazy drunk, gave Jefferson and his administration a perfect target, and the Senate convicted him in 1804, removing him from office.

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At the time, since being a crazy drunk was neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor, there was concern that using Pickering's obvious mental instability as a basis for impeachment would open the floodgates by expanding the grounds for impeachment to include personal peccadilloes. This, it turns out, was an empty concern. In 1805, when the Democratic-Republicans went after Chief Justice Samuel Chase, a Federalist holdover, the charges failed in the Senate. Chase's counsel, Luther Martin—who, truth be told, probably was drunk more often than Pickering was—won the case by insisting that only actual crimes could be used as the basis for impeachment proceedings.

I thought this was rather important now that Whitewash Week has begun in the case of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. Over the weekend, the administration*'s apologists, both in and out of Congress, fanned out across the Sunday Shows to make the case that, while they certainly sympathized with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, they simply couldn't allow her testimony to ruin the life of this good man simply because he fudged and dodged and prevaricated under oath on every detail of his life since high school.

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The White House, of course, has both thumbs, both feet, and a bag of cannonballs on the scale. From CNN:

Trump said Saturday that the FBI would have "free rein" to investigate whatever it wanted in the probe, saying, "They have free rein to do whatever they have to do." But potential inconsistencies emerged Sunday between public statements by administration officials that appeared to finesse Trump's assertion and what some sources are saying privately about the probe.

Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that the reopened FBI checks into Kavanaugh would be "limited in scope, it's meant to last one week, and ... it's not meant to be a fishing expedition."

But she also insisted that Trump respects the independence of the FBI and believes it should look into "anything that is credible within that limited scope." White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on "Fox News Sunday," meanwhile, that "the White House is not micromanaging this process." But she also warned that "Senate Republicans are going to lay out and dictate those terms, and we look forward to this wrapping up so we can see what was seen in the last six investigations that Judge Kavanaugh has been a part of."

Tactical incoherence is not a bad strategy. It's certainly worked for this president* before.

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In addition, Rachel Mitchell, the outside prosecutor hired by the Republicans to conduct the questioning of Ford and Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee—or, at least, conduct it until Lindsey Graham decided to have a herd of cows because Mitchell was edging close to some actual facts—released a memo that pretty much confirmed that she was hired to be a hack anyway. Is there a tell? How about the fact that Mitchell's memo was sent only to the committee's Republican members? How about the fact that Kavanaugh's rather memorable testimony—BEER!—is not considered in the memo at all? How about the fact that Mitchell treats as a Jack McCoy Moment the fact that Ford, who told the committee she had a fear of flying, admitted to having flown on airplanes anyway?

Meanwhile, evidence keeps rolling in that Kavanaugh was every bit the uncontrollable and nasty inebriate that Ford's testimony made him out to be. From The Washington Post:

Charles Ludington, a former varsity basketball player and friend of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, told The Washington Post on Sunday that he plans to deliver a statement to the FBI field office in Raleigh on Monday detailing violent drunken behavior by Kavanaugh in college...in it, Ludington says in one instance, Kavanaugh initiated a fight that led to the arrest of a mutual friend: “When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”

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Ludington says he was deeply troubled by Kavanaugh appearing to blatantly mischaracterize his drinking in Senate testimony. “I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18 or even 21 year old should condemn a person for the rest of his life,” Ludington wrote. “However ... if he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences.”

Kavanaugh's tirade before the committee last week gives me every reason to believe that Ludington's story is absolutely true. There will be more of these episodes revealed as time goes on, whether Whitewash Week succeeds or not. There will be frustrated FBI agents who vent to the media. Kavanaugh seems to have cut a wide swath as he wove through Yale. Michael Avenatti shows no sign of becoming shy of the spotlight, and he says he has victims and witnesses in his pocket. And Kavanaugh's testimony, on this and on so many other subjects, was so transparently false that picking it apart is going to become something of a parlor game for quite some time.

And Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is going to fade into the historical shadows, with nothing but the phony sympathy of horrible men to remind her what happens when you do your civic duty in this time in history in which the spirit of crazy old John Pickering is not only exhumed, but celebrated.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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