I didn't think that I'd be blogging about this again so soon, but apparently, the FBI hotline into Brett Kavanaugh's conduct led to 4,500 tips, and you'll never guess what happened next:The FBI said some of the 4,500 tips it received about Justice Brett Kavanaugh during its investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him were given to the Trump White House, leading some Democrats to call the process a sham. https://t.co/vp4eq75JLC
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 22, 2021
In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, an F.B.I. assistant director, Jill C. Tyson, said that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received during an investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh’s past were referred to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, whose handling of them remains unclear.
The letter left uncertain whether the F.B.I. itself followed up on the most compelling leads. The agency was conducting a background check rather than a criminal investigation, meaning that “the authorities, policies, and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,” the letter said.
And my guess from that is then Don McGahn bundled them up, loaded them onto a raft, doused them in kerosene, and let the whole mess sail down the Potomac as he played "Dust in the Wind".
Admittedly, I do have a particularly picturesque imagination.
So yes, Alice, this did just get "curiouser and curiouser". Of course, tiplines do generate duplicate claims and sometimes sheer nonsense, but what a series of rabbit holes are suggested here!
2 comments:
The rigging is explained here:
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2021/07/22/senator-whitehouse-is-surprised-by-something-he-should-not-be-surprised-about-that-the-secondary-kavanaugh-background-investigation-was-rigged/
“… The client for these background investigations is the White House Counsel’s Office and the White House Counsel is in ultimate charge and provides the ultimate direction of the inquiry. Only information that the White House Counsel wants released is released to the Senate committee of jurisdiction for their review. This whole secondary/reopened investigation, just like a game of chance in a casino, was rigged for the White House by the White House through the White House Counsel and his office. The FBI was only ever going to respond to Don McGahn’s instructions and work within the parameters he gave them because that’s the process. …”
Yep--it's performative surprise, and it could have been called out at the time. The sticking point for me with the Kavanaugh thing is the degree to which it demonstrated that the White House and GOP Senators simply did not give a fuck if Kavanaugh was morally compromised or if a scandal loomed. They were going to bald-faced gut it out regardless of anyone's protest. But just because they got their boy on the bench doesn't mean he still couldn't be a timebomb of scandal waiting to go off because the appropriate questions were never properly publicly defused. They were quite happy with it for whatever cases he could sit for because Republicans are playing cutthroat. Dems just...don't?
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