Trump's successful neutering of the FBI's Kavanaugh investigation has scary implications

[babylonsister]

Trump’s successful neutering of the FBI’s Kavanaugh investigation has scary implications
A proof of concept for further erosion of the FBI.
By Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Oct 8, 2018, 10:00am EDT


Donald Trump’s instinct was right. A loyal FBI is worth a purge or two.

Case in point: Brett Kavanaugh is an associate justice on the Supreme Court.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, installed after Trump fired James Comey for refusing to limit the scope of the Russia investigation, said and did nothing as the White House ordered limits on a reopened background check of Kavanaugh.

The bureau agreed not to interview Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her, or to respond to many people stepping forward with new information. They agreed not to follow up on possible lies Kavanaugh is accused of telling in his Senate testimony. And they made other concessions unknown to the public or even Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

According to the New York Times’s reporting, White House lawyer Don McGahn made sure relevant questions went deliberately unexplored because, he believed, “a wide-ranging inquiry like some Democrats were demanding — and Mr. Trump was suggesting — would be potentially disastrous for Judge Kavanaugh’s chances of confirmation to the Supreme Court.”

At the end of the one-week deadline, the FBI handed a document to Congress that didn’t seek to clarify seriously the veracity of the accusations against Kavanaugh, but its existence gave Republicans the cover they wanted to back him anyway.

The upshot is that the independent FBI established after Watergate and whose existence everyone reaffirmed during Wray’s confirmation process is now dead. Other senior FBI leaders have already been purged, and Trump’s shameful treatment of Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, and others has made it clear that he has no compunction about ordering further purges.

Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to the integrity of the Court — and the implications of how he got there go well beyond to the entire legal order.

Bye-bye, Bob Mueller

The White House got away with stamping on an FBI investigation. Think of it as a dry run for a coming shutdown of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

more...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/8/17947614/kavanaugh-fbi-investigation

[SHRED]

1. I don't trust ANY fucking Republican

Wray, Rosenstein, and Mueller included.

[lapfog_1]

2. while we know that the background check was a sham

but before you start shoveling dirt on the FBI or Mueller...

There is a big difference between an Investigation and a Background Check.

[babylonsister]

3. The dirt is being shoveled on dt here. nt

[lapfog_1]

5. "Bye-bye, Bob Mueller"

I rest my case.

[Squinch]

6. That's not shoveling shit. That's expressing fear.

[lapfog_1]

7. shoveling dirt

as in "bye bye" as in they are dead, gone, and buried.

And you haven't acknowledged that there is a huge difference between "background check" where the White House can direct who to question and even what questions to ask... and an investigation where the FBI can go wherever the leads and answers to questions lead them.

Mueller's investigation is not at all like the Kavanaugh/Ford background check.

Yes, the background check was a sham. It was NOT an investigation. We can't let THEM conflate this... so we shouldn't either.

When they do it, they want to portray Kavanaugh as being "proved innocent" or "there wasn't any truth to the allegations that we could find" BUT that is false. The FBI didn't LOOK for any truth to the allegations or not.

[Squinch]

10. You are misunderstanding everyone's meaning when they say "bye bye Mueller." No one is

saying they want him to go, and no one is blaming the FBI for the investigation.

People are expressing fear that with the rapist on the court, there is no longer any safeguard to keep Mueller's investigation safe.

No one is disagreeing with you. Everyone knows the investigation is different from a background check.

[babylonsister]

8. It's a distinct possibility now with

Kavanaugh on the court.

[lapfog_1]

9. sure, that was the goal of "why Kavanaugh and not some other right wing hack"

but it won't be the FBI's or Mueller's fault.

[OnDoutside]

4. He's not taking the potential indictments of Don Jr into account, before any report is made public.