Please hold
Ok fine you can have your god damn investigation if you’re going to get in such a fit about it. You just can’t interview anyone. Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker:
As the F.B.I. began its investigation this weekend into allegations of sexual misconduct by Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, several people who hope to contribute information about him to the F.B.I. said that they were unable to make contact with agents.
That’s interesting, because we the public have been being told don’t wait to be called, if you have any relevant information get in touch with the FBI yourselves.
With a one-week deadline looming over the investigation, some who say they have information relevant to the F.B.I.’s probe are suspicious that the investigation will amount to what one of Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmates called a “whitewash.” Roberta Kaplan, an attorney representing one potential witness, Elizabeth Rasor, a former girlfriend of Kavanaugh’s high-school friend Mark Judge, said her client “has repeatedly made clear to the Senate Judiciary Committee and to the F.B.I. that she would like the opportunity to speak to them.” But, Kaplan said, “We’ve received no substantive response.”
That is, Trump and his administration are calculatedly and deliberately ignoring potential information about a nominee to the Supreme Court who could be there for forty years or more. They don’t want to know he assaulted X or threw up on Y while blind drunk; they want only to put their guy on the court so that he can take rights away from women and workers and brown people for generations.
Christine Blasey Ford has accused Judge of being an accessory to Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault on her, in 1982, when they were all in high school. Kavanaugh has vehemently denied any role in the assault, and Judge, through his attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, also has denied any recollection of it. Kaplan said that early this past week she began reaching out to the F.B.I. and to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Rasor’s behalf. “She feels a sense of civic duty to tell what she knows,” Kaplan said. “But the only response we’ve gotten are e-mails saying that our e-mails have been ‘received.’ ” At one point, she said, an F.B.I. official suggested she try calling an 800-number telephone tip line.
Ford’s attorney has had the same experience, despite multiple attempts to get through to the FBI.
Rasor dated Judge on and off for two to three years while they were students at Catholic University, and she is now a public-school teacher in New York. After hearing Judge’s denials, Rasor came forward, offering to give a sworn statement to the F.B.I. challenging Judge’s credibility. According to Kaplan, the F.B.I. has so far shown no interest in hearing what Rasor has to say, and efforts to contact the Bureau have gone nowhere.
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Leah Litman, an assistant professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, said the severe restrictions on the scope of the investigation made it “a joke.” She asked, “What kind of an investigation into an assault that happened under the influence of alcohol doesn’t include investigating the accused’s use of alcohol?” She said, “Usually, the F.B.I. investigators aren’t told who to call and who not to.” She said that Rasor should be interviewed, given her past relationship with Judge. “If Mark Judge is on the ‘approved’ list of witnesses, and they are interviewing him, there is no reason not to interview Rasor, who has testimony that is very relevant to his credibility, and the testimony that he would offer,” she said.
Yes but that might be bad for Kavanaugh so nope nope nope.
Democratic officials with experience overseeing F.B.I. background investigations disputed that there was anything procedurally routine thus far in the F.B.I.’s renewed investigation into Kavanaugh. Robert Bauer, who served as the White House counsel to President Obama, said that he had overseen numerous F.B.I. background investigations and never seen one so circumscribed. “The F.B.I. should have the latitude to determine what is necessary in a credible, professional inquiry,” he said. “The issue on the table is, Did he or didn’t he engage in the conduct that Dr. Ford alleged?” To reach the answer, he said, “The F.B.I. needs to utilize its expertise to investigate. But instead the White House has dictated a restricted investigative plan. So it’s contaminated at the core.”
But if you know something, do call the FBI. Just be prepared to wait.
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It’s got to be more than that. They have an entire list of people that will be more than willing to do that, and Trump could declare Kavanaugh too tainted and move to the next one on the list, who will also be more than willing to do what Trump and Republicans, Inc, want.
I think the issue is worse than that. I think they are determined to make sure the women do not win. This is about male supremacy, male dominance, male privilege, and they are doing what they can to ensure that the women see that they have no options, that they are irrelevant, that they will not, cannot, never will win. I also suspect that was part of the impetus behind affirming Clarence Thomas, when they probably had the names of some other black Republicans that they could have put on the court. But allowing a man to be removed from consideration is a challenge to drunken frat boys everywhere, to reality-show celebrities who believe “they let you do it when you’re famous”, to anyone who considers women playthings and/or sandwich makers there to do their bidding.
My son made an interesting point the other night. He said that any man who said “every man does that” has just incriminated himself. I think he’s right. But I also suspect that every man who can defend this behavior in any way has an underlying contempt for women that may or may not be visible on the surface.
But there’s the timing. If they ditch Kav now they won’t have time to rush him through before the midterms, and they expect to lose the House and possibly even the Senate, at which point they won’t be able to rush through anyone.
But that’s not to say the defeat women agenda isn’t also part of it.
Wasn’t Kavanaugh’s particular speciality, on top of the run-of-the-mill misogyny and desire to overturn Roe v Wade, that he thought that sitting US presidents should not have to bother themselves with facing criminal investigations? That when the president does it, it’s not illegal? Most of the other prospects are much of a muchness, but I thought that was what set Kavanaugh apart.
Eh, they’ve still got plenty of time to rush through another nominee even if it’s in a lame duck session… Two to three months is plenty. Of course they could’ve started several weeks ago.
Trump may be just bright enough to realise that it’s shaping up not as win-lose in his favour, but lose-lose. If Kav gets tossed, what will that do for the morale of the Entitled Class? Likely a mixture of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ and ‘who will they come for next? (And will it be me?)’
But if Trump and Kav decide to ‘tough it out’ – the initial tack tried by Nixon over Watertgate – lost will be the support and goodwill of the bulk of the female half of the US population, and a fair proportion of the male half as well.
So lose – lose appears most likely IMHO.