What was released:The A.B.A. request was made on Thursday evening in a letter from the association's president, Robert M. Carlson, to the Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman, Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the senior Democrat on the panel.
The bar association urged that senators vote on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination "only after an appropriate background check into the allegations made by Professor Blasey and others is completed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation," the letter said.
The call for a pause is significant not just because of the bar association's clout in the legal community, but because an A.B.A. committee had said unanimously a month ago that Judge Kavanaugh was "well qualified" for the Supreme Court, its highest possible designation.
The actual committee released this:
The Senate Judiciary Committee released this letter on Friday from the ABA stating that Robert Carlson, the President of the American Bar Association who wrote the letter, didn't get the it approved by the committee that actually votes on this sort of thing and that the ABA's rating of Judge Kavanaugh "is not affected"
So either the president went rogue... or they are playing both ends against the middle. If they are determined to be neutral they at least need to sensor the president, but better outright fire him. Otherwise the later statement by the committee is CYA statements and the organization needs to be denounced by the right.