[...] But late last night, a letter addressed to the body from Keith Koegler, a friend of Christine Blasey Ford and one of her corroborating witnesses, was released, in which he urged senators “to do what is right.”
In it, Koegler said he and at least seven others who had known about the alleged sexual assault that occurred when Ford and Kavanaugh were in high school were not interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation.
“The process by which the Senate Judiciary Committee has ‘investigated’ the facts relating to the assault has been a shameless effort to protect Judge Kavanaugh,” he wrote. “The fact that the FBI did not interview either Christine or Judge Kavanaugh, by itself, renders absurd any assertion that the investigation was ‘thorough.'”Here are a few excerpts from the letter from corroborating witness Keith Koegler, which backs up Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony — under penalty of perjury — to the Senate:
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Members of the U.S. Senate:
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Here are some of the things the FBI would have learned by interviewing me:This letter goes to the heart of the GOP fig-leaf defense of Brett Kavanaugh:
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- I have a copy of the email thread between Christine and me in which she made it clear that Brett Kavanaugh was the judge who had assaulted her as a teenager. We exchanged those emails on June 29, 2018, two days after Justice Kennedy’s retirement announcement, before there was a shortlist for his replacement. It wasn’t until July 09, 2018, that the President nominated Judge Kavanaugh.
- Christine has accurately described the sequence of events that occurred in the months that followed, including her interactions with the Washington Post, Representative Anna Eshoo’s office, and Senator Diane Feinstein’s office. I know because I had regular contact with her during that time.
- There was no “grand conspiracy” to conduct a “political hit job” on Judge Kavanaugh—this was always about one woman struggling with a perverse choice: Suffer a brutal toll on herself and her family to fulfill a sense of civic duty and (possibly, though not likely) avoid spending the rest of her life looking at the face of the man who assaulted her as a teenager on the United States Supreme Court or, alternatively, live in silence with the knowledge that she might have been able to make a difference.
- Christine has been afraid of flying her entire adult life. Prosecutor Rachel Mitchell repeatedly challenged Christine about her of flying, in an effort to impugn Christine’s general credibility. I could have provided the FBI with the names of at least half a dozen people who have flown with Christine and can attest to the fact that she has panic attacks before she flies. She controls those attacks with medicine prescribed by a doctor.
Keith Koegler
October 5, 2018
1) That this was a last-minute effort, to derail the Kavanaugh nomination.
2) That this was an orchestrated smear campaign, a “political hit job” on Kavanaugh.
3) That the FBI investigation was ‘thorough' — and proves Kavanaugh’s innocence.
Clearly none of these GOP cover-up rationalizations are true.
The nation and the Senate would know this — if the FBI had been allowed to do its Job, and had not been forbidden from talking to corroborating witnesses like Keith Koegler. He is only one witness, among dozens, that the FBI was NOT allowed to talk to.
Half an Investigation is worse than none. It amounts to a cover-up, that the Client wanted.
Something is very wrong when the White House legal staff is allowed to dictate very restrictive boundaries of the FBI Investigation, while at the same time the White House figurehead is allowed to tweet away — that the exact opposite is happening — that the FBI has “free rein” to investigate whatever they want.
That is what, in more equitable times, would have been bluntly called a “Cover-up”. That is what would have been called “The Fix is in.”
Hopefully when Dems do some “house-sweeping” this fall — they’ll see to it that justice is actually done. That relevant and corroborating witnesses are talked to and considered. That would include ALL or them.
What the GOP has done to trash Ford’s life — AGAIN — is truly a mockery, a sham, a travesty — to the “civic duty” she bravely chose to uphold.
Sadly the GOP members of the Judiciary Committee, have long since forgotten what that patriotic concept even means.
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