Well, this isn’t creepy and Stalinist or anything.
Obligatory point: imagine the heads exploding if a right-wing group were trying something like this to target a Democratic president’s nominee.
The progressive-left nonprofit ProPublica, funded by George Soros among others, has put out a call to the public for information about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s attendance at Washington Nationals baseball games.
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ProPublica’s Ariana Tobin and Justin Elliott apparently find it deeply suspicious that Kavanaugh attended games with friends, and bought blocks of tickets for which the friends reimbursed him.
White House spokesman Raj Shah told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh would go to games with a “handful” of friends. These friends then reimbursed him for the tickets, the White House says, and the debts have been paid off.
But the White House and Kavanaugh are not answering questions about what happened. Who did Kavanaugh buy tickets for? How did they reimburse him? Was this properly disclosed? And how was all of this treated for tax purposes?
It’s a really good bet that whatever Kavanaugh did will, in fact, be properly disclosed to the Senate as part of his confirmation process. But ProPublica’s not leaving anything to chance.
We think it’s important to figure out as much as we can about a nominee’s background before he is confirmed. So we’re turning to you.
Figuring out who Kavanaugh brought to games could be relevant to his confirmation.
[…]
We’re not sure what we’ll find. But we do know that people take a lot of pictures at baseball games. Did you see Judge Kavanaugh at a game? Did you attend a game with him? Do you have any photos, and if so, will you send them our way?
Maybe there are people in the D.C. area far enough gone to go peruse their old images and video for glimpses of Brett Kavanaugh: a man who is accused of nothing but being nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court.
It’s a good question, however, whether they’ll help ProPublica out for free. This is National Inquirer/TMZ-type stuff we’re talking about here. Sources usually expect to get paid for their tips on this kind of thing.
It’s all in good fun — sort of — if it’s just about making jokes at a public figure’s expense, or maybe scaring up a little cheap scandal. But ProPublica cloaks this in a public-service mantle, piously proclaiming that it wants to “Understand more about his relationships and any potential questions they might raise for the Supreme Court justice.”
Of exceptional relevance to this lofty goal, apparently, is the following data point from ProPublica’s list of “what we know already”:
So get out there and do your part, comrades. You’re looking for the mild, generic-looking middle-aged white dude in a blue-striped polo shirt. He may have attended a Nationals game near you…with friends.
