Christine Blasey Ford
oddly? blank 7 22
---
an 10 24 badash
A years-long investigation by a top Senate Democrat of the FBI’s 2018 supplemental background investigation into multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by Brett Kavanaugh, in the middle of his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, finds the Trump White House and then-President Donald Trump himself engaged in a “sham” process to ensure the nominee was placed on the nation’s highest court.
“New report details how the Trump White House restricted FBI investigators and lied to the American people about the investigation and tip line. Six-year-long Senate inquiry was hampered by repeated executive branch obstruction,” reads the introduction to the 32-page report by U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts and one of the leading advocates for Supreme Court reform.
“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh,” Senator Whitehouse says. “A full, proper investigation is the bare minimum that victims who come forward – like Dr. Ford and Deborah Ramirez – deserve. This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation.”
Dr. Ford was Kanvanaugh’s main accuser. She had confidentially told her Congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and later, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who was the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that in high school Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her. A lie detector test administered by a former FBI agent found Dr. Ford to be truthful.
Senator Whitehouse’s report finds:
“The FBI’s supplemental background investigation concluded on October 4. Despite credible allegations from two different women, hundreds of witness leads and tips the FBI received, and the high stakes of a life-tenured Supreme Court nomination, the FBI ultimately interviewed only ten people.”
“The supplemental background investigation was completely controlled by the Trump White House. The FBI was never given ‘free rein’ to conduct a thorough, complete investigation. Statements to the contrary from former President Trump and White House and Department of Justice officials were false.”
“The investigation was directed by the Trump White House to pursue only first-hand evidence and not corroborating evidence. Senate Republicans then cited the absence of corroborating evidence to justify confirming Kavanaugh.”
Pointing to this “absence of corroborating evidence,” The Washington Post reports it “was cited by senators as they narrowly voted to confirm Kavanaugh, marking a major triumph for the conservative movement and locking in a right-leaning majority that would later overturn the constitutional right to abortion.”
But among the most-damning facts Senator Whitehouse’s report reveals is the “FBI’s public ‘tip line’ investigation was a fake. No tip was ever investigated; Kavanaugh-related tips were delivered straight to the Trump White House without FBI investigation. Indeed, the Trump White House could have used tip line information to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory evidence.”
That fact was confirmed and made public in 2022 during sworn Senate testimony by FBI Director Chris Wray to Senator Whitehouse, on which NCRM reported at the time (video below).
READ MORE: Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity
“So when it comes to the tip line, we wanted to make sure that the White House had all the information we had, so when the hundreds of calls started coming in, we gathered those up, reviewed them and provided them to the White House —” Director Wray said.
“Without investigation,” Sen. Whitehouse interjected.
“We reviewed them and then provided them —” Wray replied.
“You reviewed them for purposes of separating from tipline traffic, but did not further investigate the ones that related to Kavanaugh, correct?” Sen. Whitehouse asked.
“Uh, correct,” Wray responded.
Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance responded to news of Tuesday’s report: “A different FBI Director might have resigned in protest: The report found messages to the FBI tip line regarding Kavanaugh were forwarded to the WH & never probed.”
The Post notes that at the time, Trump “vowed that the FBI would have ‘free rein’ to vet the claims. Trump said the FBI was ‘talking to everybody’ and added on social media: ‘I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion.'”
That apparently was a lie.
The Post reports, “the White House never authorized the agency to independently probe the sexual misconduct allegations.”
In fact, the FBI never interviewed Dr. Ford or Brett Kavanaugh, who at the time of his nomination to the Supreme Court was a federal appeals court judge, as part of its supplemental investigation.
Sen. Whitehouse’s report also reveals there did not seem to be anyone at the FBI actually working on the investigation.
“Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee also individually contacted the FBI to provide names of people with potentially corroborating or otherwise relevant information who had reached out after trying—but failing—to get in touch with FBI investigators. Some of these individuals, including Max Stier, a college classmate of Kavanaugh’s, contacted Senator Coons after they had ‘difficulty reaching anyone’ at the FBI who would ‘collect their information.’ Senator Coons wrote directly to Director Wray to request ‘appropriate follow up’ with Stier in particular. Ultimately, many people were referred or resorted to the agency’s online and telephonic ‘tip line,’ which did not result in any follow-up from the FBI.”
After Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing but before the vote that would end up placing him on the Supreme Court, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported, “Kavanaugh may have lied to the Senate, pretty extensively, in order to obtain the currency that he already has on a federal appeals court.”
===
christine Blasey Ford lived in Watsonville.
barbara ledeen [clarence --> IWF]
It's wildly inappropriate for a Senate staffer to undermine a federal criminal prosecution, and that hardly stopped her. Axios confirms that Ledeen did indeed write the hit memo that appears to have finally gotten Liu fired from the US Attorney's Office and her nomination to a position at the Treasury Department yanked. Among Liu's unforgivable transgressions:
- Not acting on criminal referrals of some ofJustice Brett Kavanaugh's accusers.
- Signing "the sentencing filing asking for jail time" for Gen. Michael Flynn (a friend of Ledeen's).
- Holding a leadership role in a women's lawyers networking group that Ledeen criticized as "pro-choice and anti-Alito."
- Not indicting former deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe.
- Dismissing charges against "violent inauguration protesters who plotted to disrupt the inauguration."
That's right, Liu, a career government attorney, lost her job because some wack-ass Judiciary staffer is still pissed about the Kavanaugh hearings (and the Clarence Thomas hearings, frankly) and can't understand why the DOJ didn't indict Christine Blasey Ford
Newly obtained tax records shed additional light on the web of “dark money” organizations tied to President Donald Trump’s top judicial adviser that were used to funnel millions to organizations that boosted the Supreme Court nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The Freedom and Opportunity Fundis helmed by Leonard Leo, a Trump confidante and longtime executive vice president at the Federalist Society, a national conservative and libertarian lawyers network based in Washington, D.C.
Between its inception in 2016 and 2017, the fund donated $4 millionto the Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), a D.C.-based dark money organization, according to tax filings obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics and MapLight. IWV was vociferous in its defense of Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford, a Stanford professor who knew the justice while he was in prep school. IWV’s president, Tammy Bruce, said on Fox News last year that Kavanaugh was “effectively being used as a stand-in for all perpetrators.”
==
suspended from bs CTT
Ethics and Public Policy Center announced Sunday that its president, Ed Whelan, “will take a leave of absence” from the conservative Washington think tank after peddling a conspiracy theory on social media last week related to a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Following a special phone-in meeting of the EPPC board on Friday after Whelan’s Twitter screed, he offered to resign “in light of what he described as an ‘appalling and inexcusable’ error in posting online a series of comments that he has now deleted and for which he promptly publicly apologized,” the organization said in a statement. The board declined Whelan’s offer to step down permanently, according to the statement, and the EPPC’s vice president, Yuval Levin, “will be in charge” during Whelan’s time away.
“The board will meet in a month to review the situation,” the statement said.
Later Sunday, Whelan released a statement of apology.
“I apologize deeply and sincerely to all those whom I have harmed by my appalling and inexcusable tweet thread last week — above all, the person whose name I wrongly made public,“ he said.
Ed Whelan’s Troubles Might Be Just Beginning
By JOHN CULHANE
Referencing Christine Blasey Ford, he added: “I also apologize to victims of sexual assault and to Dr. Ford for these and other tweets that did not address with respectful consideration the difficult question of how to assess allegations of sexual assault. I do not believe that all such allegations must be accepted as true, and I believe further that the usual inquiries into motivation, cognition, memory and other matters that apply to other charges properly apply to these as well. But my tweets did not advance the discussion in a constructive way.“
Whelan became the target of swift bipartisan criticism on Thursday evening after offering an unsubstantiated alternative explanation for Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh forced himself on her at a drunken high school party more than three decades ago.
His conjectures, laid out in a series of tweets, included floor plans of the house in which Whelan said the alleged assault may have taken place. It also featured the name and photo of a high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s whom Whelan identified as a potential suspect and posited that Ford may have misremembered as the federal judge.
POLITICO reported on Friday that CRC Public Relations, a prominent firm based in Alexandria, Va., assisted Whelan in coordinating the rollout of his attempt to discredit Ford’s account and exculpate Kavanaugh.