Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) may have some reputational challenges as regards her qualifications for the Oval Office, but never disregard her ability to approach work creatively. The ambitious former prosecutor and Attorney General of California thinks she knows how the Democrats can use their efforts to smear Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh while at the same time making the case for impeaching Donald Trump.

Now that’s multitasking, people!

Harris penned a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler — but first gave it Axios (that’s getting ahead of the story, lady!) — in which she requests that the House “form an outside task force to investigate the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh and whether he lied to Congress during his testimony” due to the increasingly shady, retracted and corrected, and uncorroborated and outright debunked allegations reported in the New York Times (we’ve covered it extensively).

Apparently Nadler has backed away from the Kavanaugh smear because he wants to focus on getting the bad man in the White House impeached. But Harris, using her attorney skills, makes the case in the letter that the hunt to kill Kavanaugh may ultimately land them their orange whale.

Why it matters: Nadler and others on the committee have poured cold water on the idea of investigating Kavanaugh because they’re instead focused on impeaching President Trump. But Harris argues that an outside task force could allow Democrats to answer the growing calls for Kavanaugh’s impeachment and also investigate the president.

• “I understand that the House Judiciary Committee has limited resources and many other responsibilities,” Harris writes in her letter. “However, in the past, congressional committees have dedicated resources and established structures to pursue serious cases of misconduct — including by creating a task force and retaining outside counsel to help lead impeachment inquiries.”
• “The House Judiciary Committee should pursue whatever form of investigation best suits its work and competing demands,” she writes, “but Mr. Kavanaugh’s appointment to a lifetime seat on our highest court warrants a similarly rigorous approach.”

Whatever else you may think of Ms. Harris, she’s an outside-the-box thinker who understands what motivates people and how to use those things to get what she wants. Of course, in the case of Kavanaugh specifically, any “outside investigation” will require some pretty serious fabrication because the man has already been vetted and vetted and vetted some more. And there’s no way, if Nadler agrees to such a thing, Harris will allow it to turn up nothing.

So kudos to Harris for being highly skilled at manipulation in pursuit of her goals. Imagine if she used her powers for good instead of using them to try to destroy political enemies and weaken the country’s trust in itself. She might make a decent president.