FBI’s fake Kavanaugh inquiry yields fake results

(Photo: Saul Loeb, AP)

EJ Montini, Arizona Republic 

Published 9:39 a.m. MT Oct. 4, 2018 | Updated 9:40 a.m. MT Oct. 4, 2018

Opinion: If you limit an investigation's scope and impose time constraints what you're saying, essentially, is that you don't want an investigation. You want cover from a decision you've already made.

When the Republicans who control the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to limit the scope and the time of the FBI’s follow-up investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh they guaranteed that there would be no investigation.

Not in any real sense.

And that appears to be what they got.

During the course of his nomination hearing Kavanaugh was caught in a number of untruths. Apparently, none of those were further investigated. Or worse. The senators simply don’t care.

They can't handle the truth

Now, we find that the limited FBI inquiry forced on the committee by Sens. Jeff Flake and Chris Coons wasn’t much of an inquiry…at all. 

Flake has said that lying under oath would disqualify a candidate. 

We’ll see if he actually believes that, because Kavanaugh’s trouble with the truth was evident even without the latest FBI probe.

Sen. Coons, on the other hand, said he was “very concerned by reports that the scope was narrowed.”

Others have expressed the same feelings. Dozens of potential witnesses were ignored.

Witnesses ignored

In one instance, a man who went to college with Kavanaugh, James Roche, wrote for Slate, “Brett Kavanaugh stood up under oath and lied about his drinking and about the meaning of words in his yearbook. He did so baldly, without hesitation or reservation. In his words and his behavior, Judge Kavanaugh has shown contempt for the truth, for the process, for the rule of law, and for accountability. His willingness to lie to avoid embarrassment throws doubt on his denials about the larger questions of sexual assault.”

He wasn’t contacted. 

An inquiry that ignored so many potential witnesses – including Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanagh -- made it easy for Republican Chairman Charles E. Grassley to say, “There’s nothing in it that we didn’t already know.” 

Meantime, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein told reporters that “the most notable part of this report is what’s not in it.”

Getting the results they wanted

White House spokesperson Raj Shah said 10 people were contacted by the FBI, and that the report shows nothing to keep Kavanaugh from being confirmed.

But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Shah told reporters, “The Senate has set a scope on what they are interested in.”

And more importantly, what they were NOT interested in.

The truth.