2018 FBI Background check on Kavanaugh may have been fake

Politics & Elections
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I think we’re agreed on all of that.

I don’t actually think there was. The FBI was given one week to investigate a decades-old cold case.

It also wasn’t a criminal investigation. There was no grand jury. There was no involvement from a U.S. Attorney. The FBI lacked a lot of tools it normally has when it conducts an investigation. It also wasn’t really a background check. It was an odd one-off investigation under severe constraints.

I’m not actually convinced of that, but as I’ve said, I have no objection to further investigation of how the FBI and the DOJ conducted the investigation, and whether anyone involved deliberately lied to or misled Congress.

Wait. I agreed it would be best if we had the information in your hypothetical, but here you seem to be switching to the actual case, which I pointed out is very different than your hypothetical. Still, I agree it would be best if we had all of the available information. Of course it is. But senators being “satisfied” is entirely relevant. The FBI didn’t open the investigation on its own. This wasn’t an independent criminal investigation. The Trump administration ordered a special, limited investigation at the explicit request of several senators.

Again, I don’t think we should ignore what senators did. The investigation was only done in the first place as part of the confirmation process.

I think this is a key point, which I think I’ve made a few times. It’s not a question of Republicans “shutting down an FBI investigation.” The FBI didn’t initiate the investigation. Republicans never tried to shut it down. It only ever occurred in the first place because a few key Republican senators requested it.

Here’s the thing: if the FBI had conducted a formal criminal inquiry, and if it were curtailed or cut short by political interference, or if it turned out that the FBI had only made a token effort, I would absolutely be in favor of re-opening it. But this was never a criminal investigation. It was always a political investigation for political purposes.

Any re-investigation would also be political. As far as I know, there is no Federal nexus involved in the alleged crime. The FBI has no criminal jurisdiction. And the President of the United States using the FBI to launch a political investigation of a sitting judge who was appointed by his predecessor and opponent in the last election just seems like a terrible idea to me.

Again, though, if any law enforcement agency or prosecutor’s office with relevant jurisdiction wants to open a criminal investigation on their own initiative, have at. And, again, I’m in favor of a Congressional and/or DOJ Inspector General investigation into how the FBI and the DOJ conducted the original investigation.

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Fair enough. Thanks for keeping me honest.

No, I think it only occurred because a few key Republican Senators were shamed into joining the Democratic minority who was demanding it. But anyway.

Yes, there’s the thing.

The FBI had conducted a formal inquiry as part of a Congressional hearing, with witnesses testifying. If it were curtailed or cut short by political interference, or if it turned out that the FBI had only made a token effort, I would absolutely be in favor of re-opening it.

Why is a Congressional hearing entirely different from a criminal inquiry? I don’t mean rules of evidence or statute of limitations, or double jeopardy. From an ethics and transparency standpoint, why is it different?

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Taking another tack, this was a job interview. Nothing more, nothing less. The Senate is given a candidate. They can confirm (hire) or not. In the future, they have the power to fire as well. Nothing is written in stone. There is no one-way-valve to the Supreme Court, where they are inaccessible to all external factors once the gavel drops on the confirmation hearing.

When my company interviews someone, we may do a background check, then make a decision. It may be that it was determined that only a cursory background check was needed, and that is ok.

If it ends up after hiring that the cursory check was incomplete or inadequate somehow, why exactly should I not get it done properly, and then determine what action to take next? Unless it is egregious, I probably will not take extreme action. But it might be egregious.

So why not repeat a faulty background check?

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…Because it is? A criminal investigation just isn’t the same thing as an investigation as part of a confirmation process. The first has elaborate rules and procedures and statutes and case law and executive orders and departmental regulations. The second doesn’t. The second isn’t even really a thing. This was an ad hoc “investigation.” It was under-resourced and arbitrarily limited from the start. The Senate had the option at the time to insist on a lengthier and more exhaustive investigation. It didn’t.

I actually agree that Republican Senators wanted a cursory “investigation” that wouldn’t turn up anything, but…it’s not actually illegal for the Senate to fail to do their due diligence. The entire matter was political from the get-go.

And by the way, your terms are getting a bit slippery here. There were Congressional hearings, but that’s not at issue here. What’s at issue is an ad hoc FBI investigation that was performed on the orders of the President in response to public requests by several Senators. Which, again, is an entirely different creature from a criminal investigation.

If you botch a criminal investigation, you can get a “do-over” before charges are brought, and re-investigate. But once charges have been brought, and the case has been resolved, you can’t actually re-investigate someone. You can investigate the investigation, but you don’t get a second bite at the apple.

Brett Kavanaugh has already been confirmed. To the extent that this situation is analogous to a criminal investigation, and I don’t think it really is, his case has already been resolved.

President Biden isn’t Justice Kavanaugh’s employer. Neither is the U.S. Congress. He is a Constitutional officer of a co-equal branch of the United States government. The Congress does not have the power to fire Justice Kavanaugh. They can remove him, but only if he is impeached by a majority vote of the House, tried in the Senate, and convicted by a 2/3 majority. Again, this is not an analogous situation.

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Your response includes … rules of evidence, statutes of limitations, etc. You never mention ethics or transparency.

An ad-hoc investigation providing input to Congressional hearings. So yes, they are at issue. The investigation was not for a reality show. Now you are setting yourself up for accusations of intellectually dishonest arguing. :slight_smile:

Second bite at the apple - yup, double jeopardy, exactly what I stipulated was not relevant to my question. The question about the ethics or transparency. The question you did not address.

Great Caesar’s ghost, what is the bloody difference in this case between “removing” and “firing”?
Company policy says I can only fire an employee if 2/3 of management agrees. Does that mean I can’t fire him, only remove him?

But to follow your inexplicable distinction without a difference,

The information expected from a reasonable investigation was critical for the confirmation decision. The results of that decision can be reversed. True fact, whatever you insist on calling that reversal.

I claim that if critical information that you used to make a decision is found faulty, and the results of the decision can be reversed, then the correct action is to get better information, and determine what action will best serve the parties involved.

Please tell me if you disagree, or how a Supreme Court Justice is somehow exempt from this fairly obvious (to me) rule.

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I did, just not the way you wanted me to. There are extensive departmental rules and regulations and executive orders and statutes and case law on the ethics and transparency requirements for criminal investigations.

These same rules simply don’t exist for what the FBI did in this case, because what the FBI did wasn’t a regular investigation. It wasn’t a criminal investigation. It wasn’t a standard background check. It was an ad hoc political investigation. Exactly what ethics and transparency requirements to you think it violated?

And to the extent that it might have violated ethics or transparency standards at the FBI, it seems to me that the response should be an investigation of the FBI’s conduct.

Senator Whitehouse, who is the one cited in the OP complaining about the FBI investigation, voted “Nay” anyway, so a more thorough investigation wouldn’t have made any difference to his vote. Unless you’re suggesting that you think a more thorough investigation could have provided stronger evidence in support of Kavanaugh. But since he was confirmed, that would be a moot point, anyway.

The Republican Senators who voted in favor of confirmation, and who might in theory have been convinced to vote “Nay”, and change the outcome, seem satisfied with the investigation. And again, I think we agree that’s because they never wanted anything more than a cursory investigation for political cover. But, again, that’s kind of my point.

Great Caesar’s Ghost, yourself. Do you honestly not get the difference between a private company following internal employment procedures, and the United States Constitution?

Again, Congress does not employ Supreme Court Justices. Supreme Court Justices do not have employment contracts. They do not serve at the pleasure of Congress. Congress can’t fire them. There is a Constitutional process for Congress to impeach and remove a Supreme Court Justice for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, but that is simply not the same as a company firing an employee. Not even close.

How is a Supreme Court Justice exempt from a rule you made up? If nothing else, I suppose, by virtue of the fact that the U.S. Constitution provides that Supreme Court Justices serve a lifetime appointment, and can only be removed through impeachment and conviction in a Senate trial for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” There are no take-backs.

With all of that being said, if you honestly think there’s no difference between a private company hiring an employee and the U.S. Senate confirming a Presidential appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, or between a private company firing someone and the impeachment and removal of a Supreme Court Justice, or between the internal personnel procedures of a private company and the Constitutional procedures for selecting and removing high officials of the United States government, I honestly don’t think there’s any point to continuing this discussion.

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I never said any of that. I said that both confirmation and hiring are reversible processes, which they are. I don’t know why you imply a litany of things that I “honestly think”, other than to set up a straw man to knock down.

The FBI in fact does background checks for just about every confirmed positions so you can stop saying it is ad hoc.

You can pretend that your answer addressed ethics and transparency specifically, but it emphatically did not.

I do agree heartily on one point: I don’t think there’s any point to continuing this discussion.

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I think the FBI can and should investigate Kavanaugh. Everyone who was appointed to any position whatsoever by Trump should be investigated thoroughly. There were a lot of people in Trump’s White House who would not have been allowed anywhere near the building if their background checks hadn’t been dismissed or overridden.

As for cancelling Kavanaugh if he turns out to be a rapist, Canada had a powerful figure with a dark past and we cancelled the hell out him. Russell Williams used to be a high ranking officer who was trusted to fly the Queen of England around. He was also a rapist and murderer. The Canadian Forces burnt his uniform, destroyed his medals and recalled publications that had his face on them.

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Shame you can’t say the same thing about your progressive, egalitarian country’s current, beloved and duly elected leader Justin Trudeau, who apparently loves to dress up in Blackface more than a drunken David Duke once again fantasizing that he is a teenaged Janet Jackson getting anally deflowered on prom night by a stern yet loving Col. Harland Sanders

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I’m glad we agree on something.

I’m willing to let your accusations that I’m setting up a straw man and that I’m only pretending to address ethics and transparency go, since it’s obvious at this point that we’re not having a meaningful conversation. However, this:

You can stop saying it was a background investigation. It wasn’t. The FBI was given one week to investigate a specific allegation against the nominee, with a limited list of potential interviewees. That’s not a background check. Background checks are open-ended and involve a variety of sources and methods, and are a general investigation of a subject’s background, not an explicitly limited investigation of a specific allegation. So I’m going to keep calling it an ad hoc investigation, because that’s what it in fact was.

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I do not want to intrude to deeply into this dialogue, which I am finding definitely interesting. I just wanted to add that Congress has an additional motivation for additional inquiry, namely the consideration of legislation to further define the confirmation process, or to prevent future corruption.

“Consideration of future legislation” is one of the reasons they always give for doing pretty much anything.

My apologies for the intrusion.

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Warning for TimothyNewsome: This is off subject and very crude and rude for almost any place on this board. You are being a jerk. Please refrain in the future.

73

Before I say this, let me say I think Kavanaugh is a scumbag and I wish he hadn’t been nominated, nor confirmed.

Having said that, has it ever been determined whether a sitting SCOTUS justice could be tried, convicted, and jailed? My concern about this remains the same as it does for POTUS; it would potentially provide a check on power outside the normal system of checks and balances.

i.e. if we say Trump or Kavanaugh can be removed by criminal prosecution for serious crimes, we must accept and expect that the next Republican administration will stack the FBI with loyalists who would be willing to jail high-level Democrats over fake charges. POTUS, VPOTUS, and SCOTUS judges, you name it. After the past 4 years, we know they would try it, and probably will try it the next chance they get.

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I believe almost everyone here agrees there should be an investigation on how the FBI carried out their investigation. Notice that you would stil need to justify extending that to commanding a re-do of that original investigation into Kavanaugh/Brown.

Anyone with access to evidence of laws having been broken is at entire freedom to go to the FBI or the US Attorney’s office and say “hey, check this out!”
Otherwise, on what legal basis would a President or DOJ just order the FBI to investigate “everyone appointed to any position whatsoever”? But this is not to the point of this case, where there are actual specific allegations that could be followed up on if there is a way to do so.

Prosecuting, convicting and cashiering a mere Colonel (yes, I said mere) however distinguished or popular, who is a criminal, is not analogous to impeaching a SCOTUS Justice. Or at least it should not be.

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Russell Williams wasn’t “cancelled,” he was convicted of murder and sent to prison. He was also not a powerful figure and wasn’t even a public figure until he was arrested. Given that he hadn’t yet made general, you’d be hard pressed to make a strong case that he was a particularly powerful figure in the Canadian Forces, much less the country at large.

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No need to apologize - this is a very public setting. Feel free to jump in at any point.

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Just for the record, the FBI referred to the investigation as a supplemental background investigation.

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I’m open to the idea that background checks are generally worthless. Are, for example, people in debt at time of CIA hiring really more likely to pass secrets to Iran, or Russia, or Israel? Without evidence of efficacy, I’m against it.

The one exception I would make is working with children. That should be a criminal background check.

In this case, Kavanaugh got several background checks. They were done by journalists I mostly trust, not by a national police force.

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People who are in debt are more likely to sell out their position.

Most Americans who betrayed their country did it for financial gain—about half were motivated by a real or perceived urgent need for money and about half by personal greed.

For example:

I mean, you really think that they check your financial situation just for fun?!

80

Could be. But you didn’t show how the debts of honest government employees compare.

Your links do not support your main point. They are examples of people who spied after getting a clearance.

No. That isn’t the type of job people volunteer for.

Most people believe the work they do is of value and they should be paid for it. That doesn’t tell me that it really is of value.

The absolute worst security breaches in U.S. history (nuclear weapons plans given to U.S.S.R.) were due to idealism.

Treating employees in sensitive jobs with sensitivity might be a better way to prevent spying.