We now know what the FBI did with the tips it collected 4,500 in 2018.

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse spent nearly three years trying to understand the nature of the FBI’s “supplementary investigation” into the allegations that surfaced against Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in the summer of 2018. The senator is trying to get answers from the Trump White House or the FBI They were largely unsuccessful while Trump was still in office. But Whitehouse kept trying—once Merrick Garland was sworn in as attorney general, Whitehouse asked him to help facilitate “appropriate oversight” by the Senate on questions about the seriousness of the FBI’s complementary investigation.

Whitehouse asked Garland to explain why there was no mechanism for witnesses to report their accounts to the FBI, and why, after the FBI decided to set up an “information line,” no one was ever told how to evaluate the advice. In his March letter to Garland, Whitehouse described this informative line as “more like a rubbish sleigh, with whatever comes down from the chute placed unreviewed into a pictorial waste container.” Whitehouse asked Garland to explain “how, why, and at the behest of whom” the FBI conducted a “fake” investigation that violated standard procedures. Whitehouse also asked Garland to investigate the tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt that mysteriously disappeared from Kavanaugh’s life in 2016.

It’s hard, somewhat, to be horrified by the apparent assertion from the FBI that this was indeed a bogus investigation, simply because so much of this was known at the time and more has since emerged.

And it looks like he finally got at least some answers. On Wednesday morning, the White House office released a June 30 letter from FBI Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson. The letter is a response to an older request sent by Whitehouse (and Senator Chris Coons) asking similar questions about a supplemental background investigation—this one, submitted to the FBI in August 2019. Among other discoveries, Tyson’s letter indicates that the FBI has been Conducting a supplemental investigation under the direction of the White House, in which the most “relevant” information of the 4,500 advice received by the agency was forwarded to the Trump administration’s White House attorney, and that in the days of follow-up to the investigation, 10 people interviewed were referred (this was not mentioned, but reports The other confirmed that neither Christine Blasey Ford nor Kavanaugh were among those 10 people.) The letter makes it clear that this was a supplemental background check, not a criminal investigation because that is what the White House attorney’s office sought.

Whitehouse and Coons, along with five other Democratic senators, sent a follow-up letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, dated Wednesday, asking for an explanation of how the advice was evaluated, what follow-up occurred, and why the FBI failed to interview witnesses. the main ones. In their own words, “If the FBI is not commissioned or does not follow through on any of the advice it received from a tip line, it is hard to understand the point of a tip line at all.” In other words: why was this a bogus investigation?

Whitehouse tweeted on Wednesday that he believes the facts that were hidden and suppressed at the time still need to be made public, especially in light of the controversy over reforming judicial ethics rules that do not apply to judges. He said part of the reason he insisted on his investigation into the fake FBI investigation was that he promised Christine Blasey Ford at the hearings that he would not deny her in the rigorous investigation that her decision would change her life. It must have been received forward.

It’s hard, somewhat, to be horrified by the apparent assertion from the FBI that this was indeed a bogus investigation, simply because so much of this was known at the time and more has since emerged. The counterfeiting occurred in plain sight, as was the decision to dismiss all 83 judicial ethics complaints filed against Kavanaugh at the time, because Supreme Court justices are not bound by the system of judicial ethics tasked with investigating them. In a sense, then, because scandal has always been so public, revealing it’s shameful feels disheartening. We’re so used to all the scandal in plain sight that confirming it years later hardly feels like news.

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But it’s still worth noting that although it’s not clear anything could ever be done to see or evaluate the 4,500 unchecked advice sent to Don McGahn’s team (the same team that was tasked with confirming Kavanaugh on the bench) Or about 83 ethics complaints sent to the shredder, one thing has changed: Brett Kavanaugh is now the average “swing” of justice on the most conservative Supreme Court in nearly a century — a court where John Roberts may sometimes vote with the liberal wing . You can lose by a margin of 5-4. It is Kavanaugh that could lead to the demise of abortion protections, strong voter protections, gun safety laws, and a host of other doctrinal changes that have made the court more pro-business and more anti-worker each year. So it’s not just that Kavanaugh has a life term on the Supreme Court because there has been no meaningful investigation into whether or not he qualified. It is also because of his new position in the swing vote that every litigant who appears before him, every attorney on the Supreme Court who wants to tilt in his favour, every lower-court judge in the land, and every other justice of the Supreme Court must dedicate his days to efforts of praise and witchcraft and earning it. Which means that the only way to win the Supreme Court involves Washington absolving him, every day, of allegations that never surfaced, let alone adjudication by any fact-finding entity. And if that’s not an absolute power, I’m not really sure what is.

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