A protester holds a poster against the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh against a police barricade in front of the U.S. Capitol building during a demonstration ahead of a scheduled U.S. Senate confirmation vote for Kavanaugh in Washington, U.S., October 6, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
We knew last year that Republicans severely limited the FBI’s scope of investigation into credible accusations about Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assaults. Not only did the limit the time period to one week, but they originally limited the scope to just four people. This was later allowed to stretch to an entire ten people.
But it turns out that the FBI only interviewed nine of the ten witnesses they were allowed, and they didn’t bother with witnesses who confirmed other accusations against Kavanaugh. The FBI also didn’t use the entire week.
Because: Who needs a whole week to fail to contact actual willing witnesses whose testimony corroborates the testimony of other witnesses.
Who did they contact? Only the people who were on the Republicans’ list.
Jane Mayer wrote that the New Yorker confirmed that Senator Chris Coons personally alerted FBI Director Chris Wray of the additional witnesses but the FBI never interviewed the witnesses or the alleged incidents:
The LA Times reported Monday, “Lawyers for Ford and Ramirez, however, sent letters to Wray that, together, named more than 50 individuals that the bureau’s agents should interview. Only nine were ever contacted — all of them from the list that the Republicans had submitted.”
This came to light after the New York Times reported that another incident, mimicking then one Deborah Ramirez detailed about Kavanaugh exposing his penis and “causing” her to touch it (she was also not given a public hearing by Senate Republicans) had been witnessed by Washington lawyer Max Stier, a male classmate who asked the FBI to investigate at the time of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
The FBI did not investigate.
Stier told told Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE.) that he had seen Kavanaugh doing something like what Ramirez accused him of, which Kavanaugh denied, but to yet another woman.
The LA Times reported that the FBI did not even contact Steir, or the other classmates who confirmed Steir’s account and or Ramirez’ account, even after Coons sent a letter to Wray requesting that they do so:
“Coons sent Wray a letter on Oct. 2 — four days before the Senate voted on Kavanaugh — naming Stier as an ‘individual whom I would like to specifically refer to you for appropriate follow up.’
The FBI never contacted Stier. The bureau also did not interview other classmates who said they had heard at the time of either the incident Stier reported or the one involving Ramirez.”
There were other witnesses who wanted to come forward, who knew that Kavanaugh was lying when he claimed that he had never been so drunk that he didn’t remember what he had done. They, too, were ignored by the FBI.
This is hardly the first time the FBI has appeared to be poisoned by a political agenda surrounding Donald Trump. There was the firing of former Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Andrew McCabe just 26 hours before his retirement. In his book, “The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” the Republican McCabe warned, “The work of the F.B.I. is being undermined by the current president.”
We saw a hint of what was to come during the 2016 election with the odd announcement days before the election about Clinton’s email investigation being reopened, while the FBI remained silent about a much more troubling investigation into Donald Trump surrounding his campaign possibly working with the Russians (they were, but Mueller determined that they couldn’t prove Donald Trump’s campaign knew it was wrong, and thus didn’t prosecute).
Certainly under Trump, the FBI has been deliberately weaponized to work for the President instead of for the country. This is not to say the entire FBI is politicized. It is not. But there is a problem and it needs to be addressed for the security of our country.
Brett Kavanaugh lied to the American public and under oath in the Senate confirmation hearings. He shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court. Republicans are trying to pretend the outrage is ideological, but no one is accusing Neil Gorsuch of not being fit for the Supreme Court, even though Republicans literally stole that seat from President Obama’s nominee.
A rapist and sexual assaulter is a criminal. A criminal does not belong on the nation’s highest bench. The FBI helped put him there.
Given that there were plenty of other qualified, far right possible candidates who could have sailed through the nomination process, the question now is why.
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