THE sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s pick for the key vacant seat on the US Supreme Court, are extremely serious. But the very manner in which these accusations have surfaced must fuel the suspicion that the US political establishment has opened up a new line of attack against an elected president whom they loathe.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday in which members of the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Kavanaugh, the judge denied all the allegations, one of which dates back to when he was a teenager in high school. He described them as “absurd”, “ridiculous” and coming from a “twilight zone”. He refused to speculate on why his accusers should have made their allegations. But he described what was happening as “smear campaign”. His most telling comment was to point out that he had been in public office for 24 years, including his involvement in the 1998 Starr Investigation into the misbehavior of President Bill Clinton before and during his occupation of the Oval Office. He had later served for three years in the Bush White House, during which he had undergone two confirmation hearings. He had also been a judge for 12 years and before his nomination by Donald Trump, was mentioned a number of times as a possible Supreme Court nominee. He had been subject to intense scrutiny including no less than six FBI background checks. Yet until the President had slated him for the Supreme Court, none of these allegations had surfaced.

But there was something Kavanaugh did not say, indeed could not say, lest he be accused of being a Trump partisan. This was that this sudden emergence of these damaging allegations was very likely yet another assault by the US liberal elite that has gone feral in attempting to destroy a president it detests, who was chosen by the majority of Americans, under the US electoral system that it has never before questioned.

One of the allegations Kavanaugh has had to answer was made anonymously via a Republican Senator for Colorado, Cory Gardner. It is surely extraordinary that the Judiciary Committee was even prepared to entertain an accusation from someone unwilling to give their name. It might however argue that it would be failing in its duty if it did not attend to every piece of evidence pertaining to the judge’s suitability to join the country’s highest court. That being the case, the Committee also surely has a duty to review why all these very serious claims of sexual impropriety have suddenly emerged on the eve of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. If they decide that the judge should be elected to the Supreme Court, then they should also decide that an investigation be mounted into what looks to all the world, very like a concerted campaign to wreck his nomination. The misgiving must be that this has actually been a conspiracy by President Trump’s political enemies. If this were true it would not only be an egregious attack on the American political process but would be a worrying assault on the Supreme Court itself and its fitness to carry out its crucial duties.

It now seems clear that so great is the political establishment’s visceral hatred of Trump, it is prepared to inflict serious damage on America’s most important institutions, the Supreme Court and the presidency.