On Wednesday night, the eve of the hearings where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and one of his accusers Christine Blasey Ford are to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a torrent of additional allegations against the jurist started appearing in the press and on social media. Unlike the claims of Ford and two other women, these new allegations were anonymous and at times improbable.

As Politico writer Elana Schor explained, these new allegations came from documents released by Republican staffers in the Senate Judiciary Committee. They grew out of a process whereby the committee was investigating all leads sent to it, even unlikely ones. A senior Democratic aide complained to Schor that the GOP was “now releasing anonymous allegations in an effort to make all allegations look frivolous.”

Schor’s Twitter thread on the subject is worth reading:

Senior Senate Dem aide tells me there's a concern the GOP is "now releasing anonymous allegations in an effort to make all allegations look frivolous. We’re focusing on the ones that have names attached." https://t.co/gdzmYJLdMM — Elana Schor (@eschor) September 26, 2018

Senate Judiciary Rs have now released the anonymous 4th complaint -- noting this: "We have no reason to assign the letter credibility, and even if we did, we’d have no way to investigate the allegation as it was made anonymously and cannot be corroborated." — Elana Schor (@eschor) September 27, 2018

Senate Judiciary Rs release a Kavanaugh investigative summary that includes:



-an anonymous claim of rape fwded by Harris’ office

-two intvus & a written statement from a man “who believes he, not” Kav, assaulted Ford in 1982

-phone intvu w/a 2nd man who believes same as above — Elana Schor (@eschor) September 27, 2018

Threading these for the common theme — new details in the last few hours that have further overwhelmed the already bombarded Capitol ecosystem tracking this Kavanaugh story.



The Ford hearing starts in less than 12 hours. — Elana Schor (@eschor) September 27, 2018

Bombarded ecosystem preview: Senators will return tmrw facing questions about this latest Kavanaugh info (anonymous with few details) after mere hours’ notice to digest it all as they prepare for a vote.



Not optimal. — Elana Schor (@eschor) September 27, 2018

Whatever the motives for the information dump, it was an irresponsible move that will only sow confusion. It illustrates the fact that in a judicial nomination, reports of criminal activity should be handed over to law enforcement agencies like the FBI, rather than kept in partisan hands.