Christine Blasey Ford lawyers call Kavanaugh investigation a 'sham' after new details emerge - POLITICO
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 34 commentsBy: Senator Sheldon (POLITICO)
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Christine Blasey Ford lawyers call Kavanaugh investigation a 'sham' after new details emerge
A June 30 letter from the FBI revealed that the bureau got over 4,500 tips about the now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Christine Blasey Ford testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 27, 2018. | Melina Mara/Pool/The Washington Post via AP
Lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct before he was confirmed in 2018 as a Supreme Court justice, said Thursday that the FBI's investigation into her allegations was a "sham and a major institutional failure."
The attorneys' comments came after the FBI sent a letter to Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), who wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray two years ago with questions about how the investigation into Kavanaugh was conducted. On June 30, the FBI responded to the senators, revealing new information about the investigation.
Notably, the letter said that the tip line for Kavanaugh's investigation received over 4,500 tips — and that this was the first time the bureau had set up such a line. In the letter, Assistant FBI Director Jill Tyson said the tips were provided to the Office of White House Counsel, prompting concern that those tips may have been dismissed or underinvestigated by the Trump administration as it sought to install Kavanaugh on the court.
"The letter from the Department of Justice, released by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's office today, confirms what we knew: The FBI's investigation into Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's serious allegations about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct was a sham and a major institutional failure," Blasey Ford's lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said in the Thursday statement. "Not only did the FBI refuse to interview Dr. Ford or the corroborators listed in our letter to FBI Director Wray, it failed to act on the over 4,500 tips it received about then-nominee Kavanaugh. Instead, it handed the information over to the White House, allowing those who supported Kavanaugh to falsely claim that the FBI found no wrongdoing."
Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court in October 2018, after Blasey Ford and two other women accused him of sexual misconduct, which he denied. The Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh on a 50-48 vote.
On Thursday, Whitehouse's office said that a group of seven Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to Wray, asking for additional information on the FBI's 2018 background investigation into Kavanaugh.
"The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information 'highly relevant to ... allegations' of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored," the senators wrote in the letter. "If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all."
Blasey Ford's attorneys said in their statement that the investigation into Kavanaugh "never should have been an ordinary background check," adding that the FBI and Trump administration "hid the ball on this" with regard to the 4,500 tips about the now-Supreme Court justice.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the statements.
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I have my doubts whether a 30 or 40 year old allegation of teenage sexual misconduct should factor into a vote for Supreme Court confirmation, but since the consensus was that the allegations could effect the nomination then the investigation should have been done right.
As soon as Kavanaugh started crying on camera the Republicans circled their wagons and shut down any further inquiry and the nomination sailed through. Blasey Ford went in a blink of an eye from being "believable" to some Republicans on the committee to being a "complete liar" with really no evidence by which to draw this conclusion.
Now we learn that the FBI got thousands of tips that were not followed up on because Trump demanded that the FBI probe be kept short.
Brett Kavanaugh was a teenage drunk (during the out of school months) who hung around with a crew of other boys who were known in the area to be misogynistic and disrespectful of girls. It is not exactly a leap of imagination to think that MAYBE something happened to Christine Blasey Ford at that "party".
It was never properly looked into, nor were the allegations about his behavior at college parties.
I was calling the investigation a "sham" from day 1. How could there possibly be an investigation if the investigators refused to interview the victim or the suspect???
The whole vetting of Kavanaugh was a complete farce.
Lol…more examinations of high school yearbooks.
the last round of hysteria gave the republicans three senate seats. Let’s see how the Democrats embarrass themselves this time pimping an ever changing story that took place at an ever changing time at an ever changing location.
maybe cnn and msnbc can reach the porn lawyer in prison to give them updates about the rape gangs kavanaugh led in high school. Maybe their hero avenetti will have new secret information about black mass sacrifices kavanaugh performs at the Supreme Court at night. Whatever he says, we know the liberal media will unquestioningly accept it as “fact”
If the Senate Judiciary committee took the allegation seriously enough to have a hearing that included Ford, what was the rush to speed through subsequent allegations by other women from his college days? The FBI was ordered by Sessions/Trump to rush through an investigation that was little more than a joke. Now we see 4000 tips were produced, but next to nothing done with them. The fix was in.
Now we see 4000 tips were produced
It's amazing there weren't more tips. The strategy was pretty obvious.
Nothing stopped any of these tipsters from coming forward, going to the police, going to the FBI or even reporters in the intervening years. Except, of course, it was no longer politiclaly useful.
It's no coincidence this has come up again because a major abortion case is on the docket. Every time there is, Democrats will try to intimidate the justices the best they can. Publicly reminding Kavanaugh of their power to drag him through the mud again is just a way to threaten him.
Possibly because it was 30-40 years ago. The claim itself was the fix.
You probably remember that there were a few specific , named , individuals who said they knew of misconduct by Kavnaugh in college. Those people were not interviewed by the FBI.
Those people were not interviewed by the FBI.
so what? They can tell their stories to the media, or their friendly Democratic Senators, or they can call the FBI and say "I witnessed a crime."
You make it sound like the FBI is the only agency capable of talking to someone.
Or it's a tactic for use to help add more seats the SCOTUS.
The DOJ brought criminal charges against one of his accusers after she admitted she made it all up.
Michael Avenatti is in jail for an entirely different round of criminal activity.
Those tips were all as full of shit as she was. Why would the bureau set up a line to receive anonymous tips? Every last derange TDS maniac that managed to find the number surely called it.
You've seen all 4,500 of those tips? Wow!
Why would anyone do that???
Yeah, hardly the same thing, which you know. I would question why they'd bother with it as well, since every left leaning activist who had the number was going to call it. Why would the FBI waste the time when they knew what the deal was already. Ford was simply a tactic used by the Dems in an effort to stall for time, hoping they'd gain enough seats in the next election to stop the nomination from going through. That's why they wanted the investigation. They wanted to eat up time. They didn't care about Ford in the least.
Yep. In fact, I wonder how many of those tipsters were even alive when Kavanaugh was in college? How many identified him as the second gunman at the Kennedy assassination? Seriously, Kavanaugh must have been living some version of the Truman Show for so many to put in tips about his nefarious activities. Makes you wonder why they all sat on this for thirty years.
It’s neither notable nor impressive. Cops set up tip lines all the time, and every time they do, they get thousands of bogus tips. I imagine it was probably 100 times worse than normal with a notorious political event like the Kavanaugh nomination.
There were people who said they knew of specific college misconduct by Kavanaugh that were not even interviewed by the FBI.
Huh? Who?
Hell, the victim and the suspect were never interviewed by the FBI !!!
Thanks for pointing out my mistake.
I heard he skipped class and went to happy hour. The horror!
While pouring through the life of a teenage boy may appeal to the Tipper Gores amongst us, nothing stopped anyone from coming forward with their tales of Kavanaugh's rape gangs and whatever other BS the Avenetti cheerleaders were peddling.
It's almost as if they didn't face hours of public questioning under oath.
In front of the FBI?
I’m sure. That doesn’t mean the FBI should be launching an investigation into any or all of those claims.
Um, yeah. That's what Ford was claiming. She couldn't corroborate her story. If others could theirs, why didn't they step forward years ago? What did they say to themselves? "Well, Kavanaugh did this awful thing but as long as he's only a federal judge I won't say anything but, by golly, I draw the line at SCOTUS!!!" Doesn't really make sense, does it?
I don't know whether Ford was lying or whether she actually was a victim. I do know that the Dems pretty much callously screwed any chance of ever getting to the truth. Pelosi said she knew about the allegations months in advance but at the request of Ford she said nothing. And anyone who can swallow that can swallow anything. Every person here knows exactly what this was about and it wasn't "justice" for Ford. It was nothing more or less than an effort to keep Kavanaugh off the SCOTUS. If Ford really was a victim then I'm doubly sorry for her, because the manner in which the Dems used her was despicable.
And they get legitimate tips that have solved cases.
"The Crime Stoppers program has enjoyed great success with the information received which has led to the arrest and indictment of those responsible for committing felony offenses, boasting an average conviction rate of approximately 95% on cases solved by a tip to the program."
I’m not sure what point you meant to make with this stat, but it doesn’t address what I have talked about. First of all the average conviction rate for any case brought to prosecution in a typical jurisdiction is already extremely high - on the order 70%-80% in most places. All a tip does is maybe point you at evidence or witnesses - something every case could use.
But those are all cases where some prosecutor has reviewed available evidence and made a decision about whether or not to proceed with charges. They get tips every day that don’t result in a charge. If you think the 95% stat means that 95% of tips result in a conviction, you’re wildly mistaken.
I guess we can look forward to more "witnesses" being intimidated by Democrats
When Biden was elected I predicted the Democrats would try to impeach Kavanaugh.
And now the rest of the story comes out...None of this is new.
Democratic Senators were provided a summary of all the tips recieved by the FBI during the confirmation process.
Mike Davis, who served as chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Kavanaugh hearings, tells National Review that there was a summary of all 4,500 tips in the FBI’s report, which was available to all 100 U.S. senators.
They printed out the entire tip-line summary,” says Davis. “Every senator had full access to read those things if they wanted to.”
Davis makes a crucial point about Senate Democrats now expressing outrage: “If there was anything that caught their attention, they could have flagged it for further investigation.”
The National Review is your source?
They're nothing but a what job conspiracy site anymore
nothing but a what job conspiracy site anymore
Oh.. Since you say so.
Given your track record, I'm sure people will give your opinion all the credit it deserves
Meant to say whack job which is really what any 'far right, altright' site is nowadays
Right back 'atcha there sean