The attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford, the college professor who has accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her as a teenager, have asked the FBI to conduct an investigation of Ford's claims before any Senate hearing takes place, on the grounds that the reverse kangaroo court proposed by Chuck Grassley and company is a venue obviously designed to assassinate her character, not find out the truth. This request elicited a flurry of mewling objections from Republican lawmakers who falsely contend that the FBI does not investigate misconduct allegations leveled at judicial nominees, and speciously insisted that an independent inquiry could not possibly yield information that would help the Judiciary Committee in its decision-making process.

With increasingly frequency, the Greek chorus of sycophantic Kavanaugh defenders have taken to using the language of criminal law to discuss Ford's upcoming hearing, referring ominously to the nominee's "guilt" or "innocence" at every opportunity. Here is conservative pundit Erick Erickson—a man who once described now-retired justice David Souter as "the only goat fucking child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court”—stringing together what sounds like a mad lib composed of dialogue from the Law and Order cutting room floor:

"How do [Democrats] know for certain what happened 36 years ago?" bleated Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night, frowning into the camera as if trying to stifle a fart. "Because Brett Kavanaugh is a man, and therefore he is guilty." Another handwringing Fox News panelist worried that the Kavanaugh nomination's failure would render criminal courts forevermore irrelevant. The most famous aphorism in American law—"innocent until proven guilty"—has become the hottest rallying cry on MAGA Twitter.

Remarkable how the same types of people who usually insist that black and brown 14-year-olds should be tried as adults and imprisoned for life suddenly find themselves sympathetic to the concept of the presumption of innocence!

Assume, for a moment, that Brett Kavanaugh did the things of which he stands accused, and that we find out about it in the days to come. No one—not Ford, not her attorneys, neither Democratic senators nor prosecutors in any relevant jurisdiction—is pursuing a "conviction" here. Kavanaugh would not go to jail. He would not be indicted, or get perp-walked into a courtroom, or enter a plea, or go on trial, or be subject to cross-examination, or listen as a judge reads out his sentence over the gasps of spectators in the gallery. He would not have to register as a sex offender, and would not have a jury of his peers make a legal determination of his innocence or guilt.