We are now two days after the contentious confirmation process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh finally ended. Only a hermit or a committed survivalist in the wilds of Montana are ignorant of the raucous, profane and disgusting spectacle that occurred in our nation’s capital these past few weeks.
A short recap of the final chapter in this sickening saga will set the stage for an observation I have not seen from the professional pundits. Kavanaugh underwent 32 hours of sometimes grueling questioning from Democratic Senators determined to defeat his nomination. Then, at the last minute (not the 11th hour!), just as the vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to refer the matter to the entire Senate was about to taken, an accusation from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford surfaced. She claimed, in a letter to her Congresswoman that was forwarded to the ranking member of the committee, Senator Diane Feinstein, that Kavanaugh had tried to sexually assault her sometime in 1982, 36 years earlier.
After jousting back and forth, the vote was delayed, and on Thursday, September 27, both Ford and Kavanaugh testified, under oath, about what happened. It was an encounter for the ages. One claimed her account was 100% true, and the other was just as adamant that he had done nothing wrong.
The next day, as the vote in committee was about to commence, Democrats, who were clamoring for more investigating and more delay, got their wish. Two members of the committee decided to strike a deal. These, allegedly good friends, though members of opposing parties, would allow the vote to send the nomination to the Senate, but only with the promise of a one week delay for the FBI to undertake another background check on Kavanaugh, limited to the now three accusations of impropriety which he allegedly committed when he was in high school and in college.
Such deal was transmitted to President Trump, who, as head of the Executive Branch, had the authority to order the Bureau to do the investigation. So he did, and the “best investigative organization in the world” sprang into action. From late Friday until the next Wednesday, agents fanned out over the land to interview those had been named as people who could corroborate the events.
In those four plus days, the FBI produced nothing new. No one had any recollection of what had been alleged. All one hundred Senators reviewed the 49 page report, and the predictable happened. Democrats, who had vowed to stop the confirmation at any cost, complained that not enough time had been allowed for the FBI to do their job.
But the jig was up for the naysayers. Majority leader Mitch McConnell went ahead with the vote after more arguments on the floor of the Senate, and Kavanaugh became Justice Kavanaugh, with a vote of 50-48, with one Democrat voting yes.
However, one argument made to again delay the vote was that the FBI did not interview the two principals, Ford and Kavanaugh. Some Democrats believed that if these great investigators had done this, the judge would crack under the pressure and Dr. Ford’s allegations would be bolstered. The deal struck, though, was for the FBI to interview only those who could corroborate the allegations of wrongdoing.
What would be the outcome if the Bureau’s operatives had questioned Ford and Kavanaugh? Let us posit that outcome, and see what the feds would have found.
First, take Kavanaugh. In his highly emotional and sometimes angry testimony before the Committee, he adamantly denied every aspect of the charges made by Ford. Our intrepid investigators would get from him a “no” at every turn, a denial of every detail Dr. Ford made. There would be no place, in his testimony, for the inquisitors to get a foothold to dig further. All that would be produced would be a page or two of questions, with the notation: “Judge Kavanaugh said no.”
But what of a thorough grilling of Ford’s sworn testimony? Was she really afraid to fly to Washington to testify? A short history of her flying both east and west, even to French Polynesia, would be shown to refute her claim. She testified she was so traumatized she had to have a second door to her home installed as an emergency escape route from any threat, yet the feds would find out the second door was added when the house was enlarged to rent space to a business.
Good investigators would also zero in on the number of people present at the alleged assault. This varied from four boys to two to three boys and a girl. Perhaps the FBI would have gotten access to the therapist’s notes from 2012 which have never been made available to the Committee, which shows the inconsistency of her testimony.
Ford identified four people who could corroborate her story, but all, including one who was her “best friend”, denied knowledge of the party where the attack took place. All those denials were made under oath. Would not the questioners have made this one of the focuses of their work?
Ford was hazy about who advised her to hire lawyers with a history of Democratic activism. Who paid for her polygraph? Where was polygraph? If the FBI is the “best investigative organization” in the world, these questions would have been asked and her answers taken down.
Other inconsistencies would have been noted in a competent interview. She varied as to the year the assault took place, and her age at the time of the attack. The leaking of the story to The Washington Post is a little murky.
So it would seem to me that the FBI did Dr. Ford a huge favor by not interviewing her. All these problems with her testimony would have come up in an interview, and the “compelling” testimony she gave would not look so compelling. She has now, through her attorneys, declined to pursue any action against Kavanaugh for the alleged attack. That is probably the best move she has made recently.