Report: FBI's New Kavanaugh Investigation May Be Finished Today
How do you send the liberal half of our nation that has blue wave emojis next to their names in Twitter into a tizzy? One way is to announce that the FBI’s supplemental investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh might be done by Monday.
As readers are no doubt aware, the investigation was ordered by the White House last Friday after it became clear that Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona wasn’t going to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation without an additional background check. Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski cosigned on the new fishing expedition.
However, as The New York Times reports, that supplemental investigation may be complete in just a few days.
“Officials said the FBI’s ‘limited’ supplemental background check of Judge Kavanaugh could be finished by Monday morning,” The Times reported Sunday. “Set in motion late last week by three Senate Republicans, the inquiry was supposed to shed further light on accusations that Judge Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct during his high school and college years and help resolve the fierce national debate over whether he should win confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“But the investigation’s apparent narrow reach has infuriated the judge’s critics, who said he should be subjected to a wide-ranging examination of his drinking and possible sexual misconduct.
“Instead, the FBI was directed by the White House and Senate Republicans to interview just four people: Mark Judge and P.J. Smyth, high school friends of Judge Kavanaugh’s; Leland Keyser, a high school friend of one of Judge Kavanaugh’s accusers, Christine Blasey Ford; and Deborah Ramirez, another of the judge’s accusers.”
However, there’s no claim that the White House has put limits on who the FBI can interview aside from that, with the president publicly declaring that the bureau has a mandate “to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion.”
The outrage from the left has been increased by a college professor in North Carolina who has come forward to accuse Kavanaugh of being misleading during his testimony before Congress about his drinking.
Chad Ludington, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s, says that he saw Kavanaugh “staggering from alcohol consumption” during their years at the Ivy League school.
Ludington said that Kavanaugh could become “belligerent and aggressive” when he drank, once throwing a beer in a classmate’s face and “starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”
But Ludington’s claim was challenged by Chris Dudley, a former NBA player and close friend of Kavanaugh’s who attended Yale and played basketball with Ludington, according to The Times.
“Mr. Dudley said he was certain that he ‘never, ever saw Brett Kavanaugh black out’ from drinking, and ‘never, ever saw him act inappropriately toward any woman in the 35 years that I’ve known him,'” the newspaper reported.
Much like pretty much every other person to yell “j’accuse!” in the general direction of Kavanaugh, there’s not anything to back up Ludington’s accusations — even though he’s claiming that this was a fight that ended with someone behind bars. This is something that probably could be corroborated, particularly by that “mutual friend.”
It hasn’t been yet, so draw your own conclusions.
Ludington has also said that he couldn’t “unequivocally say” that Kavanaugh had “not told the truth” in his testimony
But, fine — if you want to expand the investigation, interview Ludington and maybe wrap it up Tuesday. Either way, there was plenty of panic about this on Twitter. Here are some of the more delirious responses from just one thread:
There are American citizens with credible connections to the Supreme Court nominee’s case knocking on the doors of the Senate and the FBI trying to volunteer information, and no one in power has the decency to take their statement. It’s really upsetting.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) October 1, 2018
Senate Democrats need to create a clearinghouse for witnesses that have been ignored by the FBI. Catalog their statements and make sure every Republican is notified of its presence.
We hear of it through multiple sources. Just not sure these guys watch anything but Fox News.
— FelineCannonball🌲⛏🦖 (@feline_cannon) October 1, 2018
GOP has a war room with one goal. Facts won’t win the war. Clearly.
Imo need Congressional Dems to know and apply effective acute pressure on the imposed limits.
And need FBI to feel and act on their call to duty.Not sure what comes next in our hierarchy of needs
— ABRobinson (@robgo84) October 1, 2018
https://twitter.com/amputeesoccer/status/1046645398247432192
It’s not just Twitter, either. Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, one of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the investigation on CNN.
“You can’t interview this person, you can’t look at this time period, you can only look at these people from one side of the street from when they were growing up,” Klobuchar said. “I mean, come on.”
There’s no evidence of this, mind you, as exhibited by the fact that the FBI has only been directed who to interview, not who they may only interview. If Klobuchar or any other politician has evidence of this, I’d like to hear it, since it would make things considerably different.
But that isn’t quite the point, which is to run this investigation as long as possible — which is past the midterms at the very least, but in perpetuity if the Democrats don’t retake the Senate.
This was what a limited investigation was supposed to do. We’ve seen no corroboration and only two allegations we could term “credible” (I’m purposefully leaving out Michael Avenatti’s circus-like accuser for reasons that should be obvious to any reader). They’ve talked to those around them. That’s that.
This shouldn’t an unlimited fishing expedition to find out exactly how much Kavanaugh drank in high school or at Yale, yet I have fever visions of Dianne Feinstein passionately declaiming the FBI must track down blood samples taken from Kavanaugh during his time at college so that a liver enzyme panel can be run on it.
Enough is enough. This is the investigation the Republican gang of three asked for. If it’s turned up nothing earth-shattering, it’s time to move to a vote.
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