New York: Speaking to reporters at the United Nations, President Donald Trump said about Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court: "They could have pushed it through two and a half weeks ago and you would not be talking about it now, which is frankly what I would have preferred, but they didn't do that." No kidding.

Now we have the most shocking allegation yet, courtesy of Michael Avenatti, known to the world as Stormy Daniels' lawyer. Avenatti has released an affidavit from his client, a woman named Julie Swetnick, who says she attended parties with Brett Kavanaugh as a high school student. The behaviour Swetnick describes Kavanaugh, his friend Mark Judge, and other boys engaging in ranges from the distasteful to the horrific.

Before we get to the specifics of Swetnick's allegations, we should make something clear. Republicans will inevitably say that they should be ignored or discounted because they arrive "at the 11th hour." But the date on which an accuser comes forward tells us nothing about whether her claims are true. There are perfectly good reasons she might have been reluctant up until now to come forward - for instance, since women who make sexual assault allegations are routinely disbelieved and attacked, she may have decided to go public only when she saw that Christine Blasey Ford's allegation about Kavanaugh was taken seriously enough to warrant a Judiciary Committee hearing.

Furthermore, there is no "11th hour." Republicans are eager to get Kavanaugh confirmed, but if it takes an extra day or week or month to sort these allegations out, then it would certainly seem worthwhile given the fact that Kavanaugh could be making laws for all of us for decades to come.