93 How to Work the Refs: What the Dems Should Learn From the GOP
UPDATE This chapter’s pretty much perfect other than any small amount of editing-it’s pretty solid too.
UPDATE:
I originally wrote this chapter in October 2018 at the height of the Kavanaugh ram through-#MoscowMitch’s words Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation hearings. At that time there was-quite rightly-a fairly serious debate among the Democratic base-as to tactics. There were some who thought we should basically trust our Dem leaders to get it right, others of us who were far less confident.
FN: You can fairly surmise where I came out from where I add the word us…
This debate actually became for more pronounced after the Dems’ historic landslide in November 2018-just a few weeks after Kavanaugh was rammed through by #MoscowMitch confirmed-it was just starting then. Indeed, during the previous 20 months we Democrats had been pretty unified-the enemy-illegitimate “President Trump”-and the goal-a Democratic House as a check on The Illegitimate One-couldn’t have been clearer.
Once the Dems actually took the House, there were more intra party debates-certainly these got quite sharp on Democratic Twitter.
There were those of us who questioned wether Schumer’s Senate Democrats were strong enough during the confirmation fight. Some of us were skeptical how tough a fight Schumer really wanted-others on Dem Twitter would upraid us as causing needless dissension-actually helping Trump by dividing the party, etc.
I personally would go back and forth in my own mind wether I believed Schumer and Friends were fighting hard enough but overall I was skeptical and retrospect this skepticism was well founded. I tried to explain to the #DemUnityPolice types that I hoped they were right but this in no way mollified them. But I had wanted them to be right just like I’d wanted those who believed Barr would play the Mueller Report straight were correct
FN: See Chapter Barr-Durham for more.
As a Cassandra you don’t want to be correct-but like so often happened on Schumer’s posture during Kavanaugh the Cassandras would prove all too prescient.
“A new book by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim provides damning new insight into Senate Democrats’ abject failure to meaningfully oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, with Grim reporting that Chuck Schumer instructed his party to basically sit on its hands, lest the Republicans weaponize any attacks on Kavanaugh.”
“As New York reported late Tuesday afternoon, Grim’s reporting comes in his new book, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, which is out now. Per the site, Grim reported that Schumer “repeatedly told outside allies that a furious stand against Kavanaugh would enrage Trump supporters and only disappoint progressive voters. We have no power, he explained repeatedly.”
We have no power. These were the inspiring words of our Democratic Senate leader during the Brett Kavanaugh fiasco. Would Harry Reid have ever spoken these words?
As just a basic matter of fact this is wrong-the Dems may not have had decisive power but they had power they just chose not to use it under the flawed premise power is something that can be stored away for a better day-in truth power is a precious resource precisely due to its scarcity-if the words use it or lose it apply to anything it applies to the use of political power.
At the very minimum, the Senate Democrats could make Justice I like Beer’s confirmation difficult-to the contrary, at the outset, Schumer saw the Senate Dems’ interest as cutting the other way-make it as easy as possible for Mitch McConnell and Friends.
UPDATE: I had this debate with the #UnityPolice constantly-but at some point it was clear we were going in circles with no one moving an inch. But if you doubt-as many did the Dems had any power in the minority in 2018, or with a non filibuster proof majority in 2021, see the Tennessee Dems who the national Dems ought to be taking notes on for how to fight asymmetrically even when the numbers are not in your favor.
The operative credo was don’t rock the boat not darn the torpedoes.
“This isn’t strictly true. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, while always a long shot to prevent, stopped looking like a totally foregone conclusion after real grassroots protests put serious pressure on those with borderline votes, like Maine’s Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and even Jeff Flake. When the activist group Demand Justice threatened to run ads against conservative Democrats if they voted to confirm Kavanaugh, Schumer was “furious,” according to Grim.”
Again the question of wether or not they could have prevented Kav is not the point, it’s that Schumer didn’t even want to try-he wanted to go through the motions.
So what message was he rallying the troops around behind closed doors instead? According to New York (emphasis theirs), basically nothing:
For a moment, it looked like the professor’s decision to testify — though she knew it would be painful and possibly even dangerous — might accomplish what Democratic leaders thought impossible. Grim reports that when the Democrats gathered on September 27, shortly after Blasey Ford’s gripping testimony, Schumer advised his caucus to do nothing. “There was no way, he said, that Kavanaugh could survive. That meant that the smartest Democratic move at this moment was to not get in the way,” Grim writes. “Don’t do anything, he told Judiciary Committee members, that could screw this up and give Republicans some way to paint Kavanaugh as the victim. Stand down, he said.”
Simply no way he could survive-over 4 years later and 8 months since Dobbs those mistaken words seem pretty fateful Schumer goes from no way Kav could be beaten to no way he can survive but his strategy never changes.
Schumer clearly shows his bias is always the least line of resistance-no matter the score of the game wether winning or losing. Again wether a fiercer war would have changed anything we don’t know but it’s not the point. The millions of women-then in fear for the future of Roe, now in thefuture reality of post Roe-deserved a real fight; the Democrats at least needed to be able to say they left nothing on the field-Schumer left almost everything.
The emergence of Blasey Ford was actually kind of an inconvenience to Schumer then. Indeed, regarding Ms Ford, Dianne Feinstein hardly comes out looking heroic either. The GOP co-conspirators actually accused her of Machiavellianism-talk about not passing the laugh test-in delaying the release of Ms. Ford’s letter. In truth she wasn’t delaying it she never intended to release it. Those GOP co-conspirators with their faux outrage over Feinstein ignoring the expressed wishes of Dr. Ford were paradoxically enough exactly right yet exactly wrong at the same time.
“And where was California Sen. Dianne Feinstein? Feinstein was quietly at the center of all this, sitting on a letter from Ford describing her allegations against Kavanaugh, which wouldn’t become public for weeks, according to Grim. Ford had sent the letter to California state Rep. Anna Eshoo, who reportedly forwarded it to Feinstein’s office on July 30. But it only came to light in mid-September, after Grim first reported on the letter’s existence for The Intercept.”
At the time, Feinstein offered up an unsatisfying answer as to why she hadn’t released the document sooner, saying the matter was “confidential” and that she’d sent it to the proper authorities. But if the hell Ford went through testifying before the nation—only to have Republicans spit in her face by confirming her alleged attacker anyway—would cast doubt on that telling of events, Grim’s reporting goes farther. According to New York:
In his book, Grim casts doubt on Feinstein’s explanation for the delay — that Blasey Ford had requested anonymity — noting that her argument “ignored that Blasey Ford had already taken repeated steps to come forward, had already told friends she planned to do so, had already come forward to two congressional offices and reached out to the press, and was only asking for confidentiality until she and Feinstein spoke.”
He also notes there could have been other pressing issues at work (emphasis mine):
Blasey Ford’s letter didn’t just contain information that could jeopardize the nomination of a man who posed a threat to Roe v. Wade. Its very existence implied some moral obligation on the part of its recipients: Blasey Ford wrote the letter, and initially contacted Eshoo, because she wanted to be heard. If Feinstein understood Blasey Ford’s intentions, why did she hesitate to reveal the letter? Grim offers an answer, reinforced by contemporaneous reporting from The New Yorker. Feinstein, the magazine reported, believed her party “would be better off focusing on legal, rather than personal, issues in their questioning of Kavanaugh.” There are other, more cynical possibilities for her delay. The senator also faced a challenge to her reelection bid: Fellow Democrat Kevin de Leon was running against her from the left. As Grim notes, Feinstein needed conservative votes to shore up her lead in the state’s general election. A combative posture toward Kavanaugh didn’t exactly serve her interests.
End quote
Legal not personal issues
So Feinstein wasn’t true to Blasey Ford’s wishes but Ford’s wish was not to have Kavanaugh’s’ alleged violation of her hidden but for it to come to public light, lest (yet) an(other) accused sexual assaulter be on the Supreme Court.
Dianne Feinstein ended the confirmation of the accused sexual assaulter who would make the overturning of Roe possible and giving more rights to rapists who enpregnate their victims to their rape victims by rhaspodizing over how professional Lindsay Graham was in running the Senate Judiciary proceedings.
Eight months later on June 4, 2019 Sarah Jones had argued
“Democratic Leaders’ Reluctance to Wage Kavanaugh Fight Looks Even Worse Today”
and that was June, 2019, two years before Dobbs-June, 2021
This then brings us to an article Matthew Miller, President Obama’s former DOJ Spokesman wrote during the Kavanaugh fiasco. After Ms. Ford’s letter got out-against the expressed wishes of Schumer-Feinstein-the Dems got some positive momentum despite Schumer’s (lack of a)robust strategy. Ford’s story got enough positive traction that GOP Senator Jeff Flake felt compelled to ask for an FBI investigation.
Of course it was tough even at the time to be very optimistic that Trumpland the FBI would ever do an investigation of the Republican President’s Supreme Court nominee which wasn’t entirely toothless, at least if you remembered as few in the Savvy MSM and in the Conventional (Un)Wisdom did not remember that the FBI had elected Trump and was now run by Chris Christie’s Bridgegate lawyer.
In any case, the FBI did it again-their fake ‘investigation’ of Kavanaugh gave the GOP just enough cover to ram him onto the Supreme Court. Of course, the Dem leaders immediately rushed in to exempt the FBI from any blame-presuming that the FBI didn’t want to perpetuate a sham, it’s just that the Trump Russia House wouldn’t let them do a real investigation. And don’t get me wrong-at the time I like many suspected this assumption likely has a lot of truth to it.
But unlike the Savvy I had a hard time getting past the fact that the FBI elected Trump so it was unlikely they’d do anything to politically embarrass him. At that time Obama’s former DOJ Spokesman had warned the Senate leadership Dems of being too trusting of the FBI.
Certainly a big part of the blame went to Trump’s Russia House-led by: the alleged hero of the Mueller Report, Don McGahn. Indeed, according to NYT reporting soon after the charade of the FBI Kavanaugh investigation was over-Trump himself initially wanted to do a real investigation of Kav but McGahn nixed it. Kind of ironic when you recall that the narrative in the MSM after the Mueller Report was that McGahn was the hero who opposed Trump’s obstruction-which in that case he did.
“An exasperated President Trump picked up the phone to call the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, last Sunday. Tell the F.B.I. they can investigate anything, he told Mr. McGahn, because we need the critics to stop.”
“Not so fast, Mr. McGahn said.”
“Mr. McGahn, according to people familiar with the conversation, told the president that even though the White House was facing a storm of condemnation for limiting the F.B.I. background check into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, 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.”
The awkward question is why it would have been “disastrous” if Kavanaugh was innocent of sexual assault?
It would also go far beyond the F.B.I.’s usual “supplemental background investigation,” which is, by definition, narrow in scope.
“The White House could not legally order the F.B.I. to rummage indiscriminately through someone’s life, Mr. McGahn told the president. And without a criminal investigation to pursue, agents could not use search warrants and subpoenas to try to get at the truth.”
Mr. Trump backed down, although he said publicly the next day that the F.B.I. “should interview anybody that they want within reason.” But the episode on Sunday was further evidence of the confusion, including on the part of the president, about what would happen after Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, forced a one-week delay in the confirmation vote of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by calling for a new F.B.I. investigation.
“From the start, there were different expectations. Democrats hoped for a full investigation into the allegations, even as they were skeptical that one would occur and angrily said on Friday that the White House had quashed it. In all, 10 people were interviewed, and an 11th declined to cooperate.”
So 10 whole people… Trumpland expected us to be impressed presumably. However neither Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford were among the 10. I don’t think simply interviewing the two main characters in the story would have amounted to ” rummaging indiscriminately through someone’s life” but presumably GOPland define these terms quite differently.
At the time, Matthew Miller, Obama’s former DOJ spokesman warned the Dems about being too trusting of the FBI-again this is the agency that stole the election from their 2016 Presdential candidate-first female candidate of a major party-so that they still needed to be warned about being too trusting of the FBI two years after the fact tells you a lot about the Old Guard leadership Dems.
While Trump and McGahn had put unacceptable limits on the investigation, Miller argued the FBI had the latitude to push back if they so chose.
“It’s Time for Democrats to Play Hardball With the FBI.”
“As the FBI prepares to conclude its review of the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, it seems clear that its investigation has been cursory at best. According to NBC News, more than 40 potential sources have yet to be contacted by the FBI, including Kavanaugh’s original accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. A number of people with information relevant to the investigation have complained that even after calling the bureau’s field offices or national tip line in good faith, the bureau has not followed up with them.”
“Absent any pressure from Democrats, the FBI is likely to simply follow its orders from the White House. So what should Democrats do? Treat the FBI like the GOP does.”
In other words, according to Miller-a pretty good authority on the FBI-the FBI was unlikely to so choose without the Dems pushing them.
“Democrats have responded by accusing the White House of inappropriately restricting the bureau’s probe—a claim based on the fact the White House has authority to set the scope of follow-up background investigations—and a charge that the White House denies. But just as during the 2016 Clinton email investigation and the ongoing Russia probe, Democrats have largely failed to criticize the FBI for its role in the investigation, and have at times gone out of their way to praise its professionalism.”
Miller argues the Dems should have-at the time he wrote the investigation was still on-called out the Bureau itself rather than giving it the benefit of the doubt and presuming it was not at all culpable.
“This strategy is both a political and substantive mistake, one that stems from the asymmetric way America’s two political parties deal with the administration of justice. Over the past several years, Republicans have repeatedly assaulted the Justice Department with hyper-politicized demands, while Democrats—for reasons that fall somewhere between tactics and timidity—have ceded the playing field to the loudest and most irresponsible actors on the right. The inevitable result has been a Justice Department that constantly scurries to respond to Republican criticism, making concessions that would have once been unimaginable, in a fruitless attempt to appease people who have no respect for the department’s obligation to enforce the law fairly.”
Exactly. In 2016, the FBI was so anxious to reassure the GOP it wasn’t biased in Clinton’s favor it literally handed the election to Trump. Ironically, even this, wasn’t enough to reassure the GOP who to this day claims there was-still-is anti Trump bias at the FBI. Meanwhile the Dems, after the FBI robbed them, continue to always presume the best and sing the Bureau’s praises, a Bureau which to this day has yet to have a single Democratic FBI Director in 100 years.”
I’ve spoken elsewhere of how problematic I find Christopher “Bridgegate” Wray-and how problematic the Dems continued support of him has been-in Chapter Joe’s First Mistake, I argue this was President Biden’s first mistake coming on basically the very first day. This despite the fact that he continually has flouted the quite reasonable requests of Congressional Democrats-see Chapter Wray for more.
In his piece, Mr. Miller pointed out that Wray is also a member of the Federalist Society-further underscoring yet again my point that Wray is not substantively the first non Republican Director of the FBI even if he calls himself an “independent.”
“Consider who is in charge of the FBI’s investigation: Director Chris Wray, who attended Yale Law School with Kavanaugh (he was two years behind him) and, like Kavanaugh, joined the conservative Federalist Society while there. During the George W. Bush administration, Wray worked as a political appointee in the deputy attorney general’s office while Kavanaugh served as a deputy white House counsel—positions in which they would have regularly dealt with each other.”
Interesting that while he’s seen as an ‘apolitical institutionalist’ type by the Savvy-in the W Administration he was a political appointee.
“Wray himself is supervised by another former Federalist Society member, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein’s ties to Kavanaugh run even deeper—they worked together on Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and Rosenstein attended the first day of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.”
“Of course, that doesn’t mean that Wray and Rosenstein can’t fairly oversee an investigation into Kavanaugh.”
In theory that would be true but…
“But one has to consider only that Republicans have spent years accusing former FBI director and lifelong Republican James Comey of orchestrating a cover-up for Hillary Clinton to understand how the GOP would react if, say, an FBI investigation into a Democratic Supreme Court nominee was being overseen by a graduate of the nominee’s law school and a former colleague.”
Exactly, even career Republicans like Comey, McCabe-and Mueller-got accused of being Clinton loyalists. What would the GOP do with these kinds of optics if the shoe was on the other foot-where everyone involved in supervising the Kavanaugh investigation really does have close connections to Kavanaugh and Ken Starr?
Again, while the Russia House had handcuffed the FBI they did have some scope to resist-if they are incentivized, Miller argued.
“While it is true that the White House determines the scope of a background investigation, the FBI possesses a number of tools to shape its outcome if it feels it is being unfairly restricted. For example, the bureau could formally notify the White House in writing that it believes further witness interviews are necessary to obtain a complete picture—an act of bureaucratic pressure that would be difficult to ignore, especially if Wray shared that conclusion with key senators. It could compile every allegation and lead it has obtained through its tip line and field offices in its final report, even those the bureau has been blocked from investigating. Finally, it could do what it does best when it feels unfairly jammed by other government agencies: leak aggressively to the media.”
FN: True-though in reality they only do this if the subject is a Democrat-as they had done in 2016.
Miller made some recommendations:
“First, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler, could make clear that, should he become a subpoena-wielding chairman in January, he will aggressively investigate the FBI’s conduct in the Kavanaugh investigation. Notifying the FBI and DOJ that he will subpoena documents, demand interviews with officials at every level, and ultimately hold a hearing will have a dramatic impact on an agency that rightly worries about its public standing—and where key officials worry about their personal reputations—after several years of GOP attack.”
“Democrats could demand that Wray and Rosenstein recuse themselves from the Kavanaugh probe, given their longstanding ties to the nominee, and insist the investigation be overseen by the FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, a career agent with no ties to either political party.”
“Finally, they could insist that the FBI interview notes (known as 302s) be released publicly before Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote, slated for later this week. This would be an unprecedented move for a background investigation, but again, the Republican playbook here is worth noting. In September 2016—two months before the presidential election—the FBI took the highly unusual step of publicly releasing 302s from the Clinton email investigation, a move it claimed was warranted due to unusual public interest, but was in fact a response to pressure from Republicans on the Hill.”
It was obvious Schumer and Friends were never going to take the last two suggestions-again, as we saw above, Schumer’s entire modus operandi was as little resistance as possible and his desire was for the whole thing to end as soon as possible-demanding Wray-Rosenstein recuse would be the opposite of everything he stood for during the hearings and in general and the same goes for making a big fuss over the 302s-that would prolong things and look unseemingly “partisan” the opposite of what he wanted. Like Feinstein had said, the Dem leaders wanted a fight on narrow ‘legal’ grounds.
However, Nadler really did do Miller’s first suggestion-or at least initially said he would. Nadler talked the talk:
“House Democrats will open an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct and perjury against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh if they win control of the House in November, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat in line to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on Friday.”
“Speaking on the eve of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote this weekend, Mr. Nadler said that there was evidence that Senate Republicans and the F.B.I. had overseen a “whitewash” investigation of the allegations and that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court was at stake. He sidestepped the issue of impeachment.”
“It is not something we are eager to do,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview. “But the Senate having failed to do its proper constitutionally mandated job of advise and consent, we are going to have to do something to provide a check and balance, to protect the rule of law and to protect the legitimacy of one of our most important institutions.”
“Mr. Nadler’s comments resembled those of Senate Democrats who pushed aggressively for an F.B.I. investigation into allegations by three women — Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick — that Judge Kavanaugh had engaged in sexual assault or misconduct. Democrats said the resulting investigation fell far short of legitimacy. And they have questioned whether Judge Kavanaugh was truthful in his testimony about a number of issues, including his drinking habits, before the Judiciary Committee.”
“But unlike Democrats in the upper chamber, who are likely to remain in the minority after November’s elections, Mr. Nadler could soon have subpoena power and a chairman’s gavel, backed by a Democratic majority in the House.”
“He said that if Democrats took power, he would expect the committee to immediately subpoena records from the White House and the F.B.I., which conducted an abbreviated supplemental background investigation into two of the misconduct claims. That document request would include communications between officials at both entities.”
“The committee would also seek to interview Judge Kavanaugh’s accusers and the dozens of potential witnesses they identified in recent days, most of whom were not contacted by the F.B.I. He said he would also call the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, to testify.”
“Mr. Nadler said it would probably be difficult to interview Judge Kavanaugh if he was sitting on the Supreme Court.”
“Dr. Blasey, a research psychologist in Northern California, publicly accused Judge Kavanaugh of trying to rape her when they were teenagers. Ms. Ramirez has said Judge Kavanaugh positioned his genitals in her face at a college party. The F.B.I. spoke to roughly 10 witnesses about the cases, but lawyers for both women said the F.B.I. failed to follow obvious leads.”
As we saw above they didn’t even interview her and Kavanaugh how much more obvious would leads need to be?
To be sure by that point the Savvy media narrative was that Nadler’s words amounted to something of a political faux pas-the mythical “independents” would be displeased:
“Mr. Nadler’s comments are likely to be seized on by Republicans, who have accused Democrats of waging a campaign to discredit Judge Kavanaugh at all costs. They argued on Friday that Democrats would never be satisfied with any investigation, and they say that it is the Democrats who are trying to undercut the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”
FN: How about an investigation that interviewed Ford and Kavanaugh?
The sad thing is no doubt the last thing Schumer and Friends want to do is “undercut the legitimacy of the Supreme Court” when in truth it’s impossible as the GOP Supreme Court has long undercut its own legitimacy-remember Bush v. Gore?
FN: And this was four years before we learned of Clarence Thomas’-and now Sam Alito’s level of corruption
“Mr. Nadler said he did not know what impact the specter of an investigation would have on November’s election, but he said he felt an obligation to proceed if Democrats take control of the House. He said such an investigation would be part of broader Democratic concerns about attacks on the judicial system and the rule of law by the Trump administration.”
“We have to assure the American people either that it was a fair process and that the new justice did not commit perjury, did not do these terrible things, or reveal that we just don’t know because the investigation was a whitewash,” Mr. Nadler said.
Speculation over what the impact would be on the election was about all the pundits-or Chuck Schumer-cared about by then-they assumed the Democrats need to memory hole the entire thing and never discuss it again-and this is in fact what they would do.
A few points in retrospect:
Nadler had talked the talk but wouldn’t walk the walk though I don’t know that he’s to blame-my strong assumption is that assuming-and I do assume-he made any effort at all to keep the promise he had made to the American people, Pelosi put the kibosh on it. This is the clear pattern that comes out in Rachel Bade’s book on the Dems falling short on holding Trump accountable.
Indeed as we learn in Norm Eisen’s book on his own experience as an impeachment lawyer on the Dems House Judiciary Committee, Nadler and his Judiciary Dems had written 10 articles of impeachment in August, 2019-at that time Pelosi was till publicly resisting impeachment-the story of Trump’s attempted extortion of Zelensky would finally get her to change her stance.
While Pelosi finally got to the impeachment she’d never wanted to and punished Nadler and his Judiciary Dems for getting there and ultimately forcing her there by shutting them out of impeachment-normally the leading impeachment lawyer in the Senate would be the Judiciary Chairman but Pelosi gave it to Adam Schiff.
And she construed a very narrow and rushed impeachment with a very tight hard deadline-get it done by Christmas, clearly even as she reluctantly did impeachment she still saw it as a political liability to end as quickly as possible-ie like Schumer’s attitude on the Kavanaugh confirmation fight. ‘
FN: For comparison Chris Coons wanted to end the second J6 impeachment to get home for Valentine’s day so…
Another point is that the Dems can still impeach or at least investigate Kavanaugh-or more precisely they could have done so during the previous four years but they chose to do nothing-they didn’t even simply have Ford testify before the Judiciary Committee. Now it’s too late-for now-with the clown show now running the House-the Kevin McCarthy-Margarie Taylor Greene-George Santos Congress. Although they still should do this as soon as they get the House back particularly post Dobbs.
Of course, the fact that they chose not to do so during the four years they held the House certainly can’t leave us overly optimistic they will do so even if they-hopefully-take back the House in 2024.
In addition post Dobbs some Dem leaders said things that didn’t exactly suggest they understood the moment we are now in as a country; that women are now in, etc. Even after Dobbs many leading Dems-from President Joe to Doug Jones-said things along the lines of ‘vote harder.”
There’s still not the recognition that the process itself needs to be reformed-the filibuster first and foremost, also #ExpandtheCourt.
We won’t know at least for the next few years but it will be interesting to see how open Hakeem Jeffries is to taking muscular moves like investigating Kavanaugh-the process by which he was confirmed for starters.
OTOH he was one of Pelosi’s favorites which in itself doesn’t bode well; OTOH he is at least a quite electric public speaker which certainly distinguishes him from Pelosi. Then he is younger-the first Dem Congressional leader who’s not a Boomer but a Gen-Xer like myself.
If I had to guess I suspect he will at least at the margins be an improvement over Pelosi-in terms of openess to risk taking but how much so remains to be seen.
FN: In many ways she was a very skillful and successful Speaker but this is a question of tactics and strategy-she tended to be fairly risk adverse on matters of political hardball.
At least in the Summer last year-2022-the Dems were able to confirm Christopher “Bridgegate” Wray’s FBI did slow walk the Kavanaugh investigation.
As we saw above, Wray seemed to think interviewing 10 witnesses-none of which were Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh was pretty impressive. But Sheldon Whitehouse was able to discover there were 4500 other tips Trumpland the FBI ignored-actually turned over to Trump’s Russia House.
FBI DIRECTOR CONFIRMS AGENCY SENT TIPS FROM KAVANAUGH TIP LINE TO TRUMP WHITE HOUSE WITHOUT INVESTIGATION
“Trump White House also determined which witnesses the FBI should interview. 4,500 tips to FBI went uninvestigated.”
Must be nice when the subject gets to tell the investigators whom to talk to!
“In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) today received confirmation from FBI Director Christopher Wray that the FBI sent tips that the agency had collected about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Trump White House without investigation. The tips were collected through the FBI’s existing tip line as part of a supplemental background investigation after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged during Justice Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation process. Wray also confirmed that the Trump White House directed which witnesses the FBI was permitted to interview.”
“You reviewed them for purposes of separating from tip line traffic but did not further investigate the ones that related to Kavanaugh, correct?” Whitehouse asked in reference to the more than 4,500 tips collected by the FBI.
Director Wray responded, “Correct.”
“When asked by Whitehouse whether the FBI took direction from the Trump White House as to whom the FBI could question, Wray responded that the agency did take direction from the White House since it was the requesting entity.”
Following the exchange, Whitehouse posted to Twitter, “Here’s a thought: nothing prevented Trump White House from using FBI tip line information to direct FBI investigation away from percipient or corroborating witnesses.”
I’ve made it pretty clear throughout this book-in this chapter and especially Joe’s First Mistake-I’m not a fan of Christopher Wray and this like example 87 as to why this is:
“Whitehouse initially questioned Director Wray about the inadequate supplemental background investigation in a Judiciary Committee hearing in July 2019. Whitehouse noted that the only conduit for information potentially relevant to the allegations was the tip line, the product of which was apparently never pursued by the Bureau. During that hearing, Wray echoed Republican claims that the FBI conducted the investigation “by the book,” while asserting that supplemental background investigations are less rigorous than criminal and counterintelligence investigation.”
Not so surprising Wray echoed Republicans as he’s-in substance if not nominally-a Republican.
“The following month, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Whitehouse wrote to Wray asking for a complete picture of how the FBI handled the supplemental background investigation of Kavanaugh. They asked why the FBI failed to contact witnesses whose names were provided to the FBI as possessing “highly relevant” information; how involved the Trump White House was in narrowing the scope of the investigation; whether the FBI had used a tip line in previous background investigations to manage incoming allegations and information regarding a nominee; and more.”
“Nearly two years later and after repeated follow-up requests, the FBI finally responded to the Senators’ questions. The June 2021 letter from the FBI Office of Congressional Affairs revealed new information on the Kavanaugh investigation, including that the tip line received “over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions.” By the FBI’s own account, it merely “provided all relevant tips” to Trump’s Office of White House Counsel, the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation.”
This has been the pattern for Wray-no less than Michael Horowitz-as not responding in a timely fulsome manner to Democratic requests-while being hyperresponsive to GOP requests no matter how unprecedented, clearly politically motivated, or baseless.
“Last summer, Whitehouse and a number of colleagues wrote to Director Wray requesting additional information on the FBI’s supplemental background investigation of Justice Kavanaugh.”
The bottom line as Senator Whitehouse argues:
“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,” the Senators wrote at the time.
The “tip line” wasn’t a tip line at all.
It confirms my suspicions that the “tip line” was not real and that FBI tip line procedures were not followed. There are FBI tip line procedures. They were not followed.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) July 22, 2021
As the Senator argues it was in reality a tip dump-or tip garbage chute
I charged that the “tip line” was really a tip dump, with all the tips going straight into the dumpster without investigation. In fact it was a tip dump where all the tips went straight to White House Counsel without investigation. Same difference.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) July 22, 2021
It was a tip dump all right-the tips were being rerouted right back to Don McGahn who had told Trump to make sure it wasn’t anything close to a real investigation in the first place, who had made clear his priority was to protect Trump’s nominee as we saw above. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.
Whitehouse had finished his letter quoted above by also addressing Merrick Garland.
“Earlier this year, Whitehouse and his colleagues wrote again to Director Wray, Attorney General Garland, and the White House Counsel’s Office requesting answers to the Senators’ remaining outstanding questions, and providing an overview of what the Senators have learned to date. The Senators have not yet received any responses.”
Has Garland been any more responsive in the 8 subsequent months?
In any case Whitehouse’s vigilance is certainly appreciated. Unlike what Schumer said during the Kavanaugh confirmation-that ‘we’re powerless’ Whitehouse refused to concede he has no power before even trying. It is pretty telling how much resistance-in the sense of how little cooperation-he got. He’s been trying to get to the bottom of the FBI’s phony investigation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee for and last year he finally got a response.
And this underscores the fact that while Matthew Miller was certainly right that the Dems need to up their game in dealing with the FBI-in truth not just the FBI but the “Deep State” in general; the IG, the Secret Service, and indeed the Supreme Court-it’s also a fact that the FBI is hardly predisposed to be responsive-the FBI which elected Trump, which hunted the Clintons for 25 years, which has never had a Democratic Director in what is now 115 years-which means they must learn to become a lot more squeaky-more Dems should follow Whitehouse’s example who offers such a sterling counterexample to Schumer’s defeatism-“we have no power.”