Monday, October 01, 2018
by
People's Action Blog
Will the FBI's Kavanaugh Probe Be a White House Coverup?
If the FBI investigation is controlled by McGahn and limited to 4 or 5
witnesses, it is a cover-up and a sham
by
Miles Mogulescu
Hagen and Corleone, or Kavanaugh and McGahn? (Photo: The Godfather Wiki)
Hagen and Corleone, or Kavanaugh and McGahn? (Photo: The Godfather Wiki)
If you want to discover the truth instead of cover it up, would you appoint
the accused's lawyer to supervise and control the investigation of the
charges against him?
That's exactly what the Trump White House and Senate Republicans are doing
with the one-week FBI investigation. They've appointed White House Counsel
Don McGahn to oversee the FBI investigation, determine its scope, and
authorize, or refuse to authorize whom the FBI may interview.
McGahn is the Federalist Society insider and White House counsel who steered
Trump to pick Kavanaugh from the list of Far-Right Supreme Court candidates
the Society put on his desk. He has since been in charge of shepherding
Kavanaugh's nomination through the Senate, advising the candidate in
Judicial Committee hearings. He has spent days behind doors in the White
House, coaching Kavanaugh on what and how to testify.
McGahn's role included supervising hours of so-called "murder board"
sessions in which a mock hearing room was constructed in the White House
where McGahn, former Fox News Co-President and Roger Ailes defender Bill
Shine, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Orrin Hatch and Federalist
Society leader acted the roles of Judiciary Committee members and coached
Kavanaugh on his testimony.
If you remember Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies, this is a bit like
putting Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen in charge of an FBI
investigation of the Don.
McGahn and GOP Want to Bar FBI From Key Interviews
According to news reports on NBC, CNN, and in the New York Times, McGahn is
consulting closely with Republicans and keeping Democrats in the dark about
limits on the scope of the FBI's investigation, the number and identities of
the witnesses whom the FBI will be allowed to interview, and the scope of
the questions they'll be allowed to ask.
So far, the list is limited to the three individuals whom Christine Blasey
Ford testified were present at the high school gathering where she asserts
Kavanaugh tried to rape her. Mark Judge, the drunken wingman who Dr. Ford
says egged him on, has already claimed he has no memory of the incident.
P.J. Smyth, who was downstairs, has also stated he does not recall the
event. While Dr. Ford's friend Leland Keyser first stated through her
attorney that she doesn't recall the gathering, she has since clarified that
she believes Dr. Ford's account.
The final witness on the approved list is Deborah Ramirez, who claims a
drunken Kavanaugh exposed his penis to her and forced it into her face
during a Freshman party at Yale.
Notably, witnesses whom McGahn and his allies won't allow the FBI to
interview include former classmates who have contradicted Kavanaugh's
testimony with eyewitness accounts about his youthful drinking, partying,
and sexually aggressive behavior towards young women.
The witnesses the FBI may be banned from interviewing include Julie
Swetnick, who submitted a sworn affidavit that Kavanaugh regularly drank
excessively and participated in sexual misconduct in high school, including
lines outside a bedroom door where multiple boys waited to have sex with a
drunken and possibly drugged girl inside.
On "Fox News Sunday," Sarah Huckabee Sanders said an investigation of
Swetnick's claims and the question of whether Kavanaugh misled Senators
during the hearings are off-limits to the FBI.
But more witnesses are coming forward to confirm Kavanaugh was a problem
drinker in high school and college, and often became aggressive, including
sexually, when drunk. In his Senate testimony, Kavanaugh mentioned beer over
30 times, a beverage he apparently has a great fondness for and doesn't know
how much is too much, according to this testimony.
If the FBI is allowed to question witnesses who swear under oath that
Kavanaugh regularly drank heavily and then behaved aggressively, it lends
strong credibility to Dr. Ford's story of a drunken, teenaged Brett
Kavanaugh accompanied by a laughing and drunk Mark Judge, pushed her into a
room, pinned her to a bed, tried to remove her clothes, and put his hand
over her mouth when she tried to scream for help.
This incident was seared for life into the brain of a traumatized Dr. Ford.
But it's plausible that that it has been forgotten or dismissed by the
heavily drunk Kavanaugh and Judge as just another high school 'bro prank,
with little consequence at the time on their lives or inebriated
consciousness.
The Cover-Up
If the FBI investigation is controlled by McGahn and limited to 4 or 5
witnesses, it is a cover-up and a sham.
Apparently, McGahn has had some conversation with Senators Susan Collins,
Jeff Flake, and Lisa Murkowski abut the scope of the FBI investigation. The
question is whether this sham investigation will satisfy at least two of
these Senators, and give them political cover they will need to vote to
confirm, or whether they will demand a full and thorough FBI investigation
instead of a cover-up.
And it may be up to the people - like Ana Maria Archila and Maria
Gallagher, the two courageous women who confronted Jeff Flake in an elevator
on Friday - to convince these wavering Senators that permitting a sham
investigation and confirmation will guarantee their infamy in history.
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