You would think Republicans would shy away from reminding Americans that their party locked arms and pushed an alleged attempted rapist onto the Supreme Court. Instead, they’re proud to defend a man who wears his contempt for others on his face. Kavanaugh is the closest thing they have to a martyr: He’s a white man who was almost held accountable for his actions.
In contrast, the Democrats seem determined to memory-hole the Kavanaugh saga. In 2018, Nancy Pelosi promised there would be an investigation of Kavanaugh should Democrats take back the House in 2018. But while Democrats did take back that body, no investigation has happened, no hearings have taken place, and no impeachment charges have been submitted. Democrats have treated Kavanaugh as an immutable fact of life. Until now, that is.
Late last week, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic senator from Rhode Island and, apparently, one of the only senators willing to remember what Republicans did while they were in power, wrote a letter calling on newly confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into the FBI’s handling of the attempted-rape allegations against Kavanaugh. Specifically, he asked Garland to determine whether the FBI conducted a “fake investigation rather than a sincere, thorough and professional one.” As evidence for the failures of the investigation, Whitehouse points out holes in the FBI’s process that are well known to those of us who have refused to let Kavanaugh get away with it: people and law firms who tried in vain to bring information about Kavanaugh to the bureau but couldn’t find an agent willing to listen; a “tips line” that the FBI never seemed to respond to or follow up on; and repeated “stonewalling” by FBI Director Chris Wray in front of congressional oversight committees about the investigation. Also, the agency failed to follow up on other allegations against Kavanaugh that, in Whitehouse’s words, “required their own investigation.”
Whitehouse called on Garland directly not because of Garland’s own contentious history with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but because Garland is now Wray’s boss. Yes, the Department of Justice was run by Jeff Sessions (and toilet bowl salesman Matthew Whittaker) during the critical time that Kavanaugh should have been investigated. But the deeper problem was that the investigation was run by Wray who—as I pointed out back during his confirmation hearing—was a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale Law School and, being a fellow conservative, ran in the same extracurricular circles, including membership in the Federalist Society. There is simply no reason to think that Wray conducted a thorough investigation of his old classmate—especially since Wray himself admitted, in open testimony, that Donald Trump’s White House limited the investigation into Kavanaugh.
Politically, Republicans treat the fact that Kavanaugh hasn’t been prosecuted for any of the charges against him as meaning he was “exonerated” of those charges, which is not how this works. They’ve turned Kavanaugh into a victim, which is easier to do because no one has adequately investigated his alleged crimes. Meanwhile, outside the ranks of Republicans, Kavanaugh is: an alleged gambler, an alleged perjurer, and an alleged attempted rapist. He is all of those things because he and his political party and his law school friends have all refused to allow a real investigation into the various allegations against him. An independent investigation, perhaps one not conducted by his law school buddy, could be a chance to clear his name. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kavanaugh-whitehouse-fbi/