Saturday Night Live
Judge Brett Kavanaugh (Matt Damon) takes questions from Senators Chuck Grassley (Alex Moffat), Diane Feinstein (Cecily Strong), Amy Klobuchar (Rachel Dratch), Thom Tillis (Mikey Day), Cory Booker (Chris Redd), John Kennedy (Kyle Mooney), Sheldon Whitehouse (Pete Davidson), Lindsey Graham (Kate McKinnon) and prosecutor Rachel Mitchell (Aidy Bryant).
KLAMATH FALLS, OR— FBI Probe of Kavanaugh Will Have Limits Set by White House
The president thinks Flake's role in delaying the vote is fine. "Actually this could be a blessing in disguise," Trump continued. "Because having the FBI go out, do a thorough investigation, whether its three days or seven days, I think it’s going to be less than a week. But having them do a thorough investigation, I actually think will be a blessing in disguise. It’ll be a good thing."
"I don't need a backup plan," Trump said, adding that he thinks Kavanaugh is "going to be fine."
While the FBI will examine the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, the bureau had not been permitted to investigate the claims of Julie Swetnick, who has accused Kavanaugh of engaging in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s, those people familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
A White House official had confirmed earlier Saturday that Swetnick's claims would not be pursued as part of the reopened background investigation into Kavanaugh.
Instead of investigating Swetnick's claims, the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview, according to several people who discussed the parameters on the condition of anonymity. They characterized the White House instructions as a significant constraint on the FBI investigation and caution that such a limited scope, while not unusual in normal circumstances, may make it difficult to pursue additional leads in a case in which a Supreme Court nominee has been accused of sexual assault.
The limited scope seems to be at odds with what some members of the Senate judiciary seemed to expect when they agreed to give the FBI as much as a week to investigate allegations against Kavanaugh, a federal judge who grew up in the Washington DC area and attended an elite all-boys high school before going on to Yale.
After resisting days of Democratic calls for an FBI probe into accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Friday for a brief investigation that would be “limited to current credible allegations.”
That apparently doesn’t extend to Swetnick, who’s represented by attorney and Trump antagonist Michael Avenatti.
“Trump has now determined that he and he alone will be the sole arbiter of whether a woman’s claims of sexual assault and misogyny are credible. Why even have an FBI investigation?” Avenatti said Saturday night on Twitter. “I thought it was their job to make this determination. He and Kavanaugh are afraid of the truth.”
“I would expect it’s going to turn out very well for the judge,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn as he departed for a rally in West Virginia. Trump added that he doesn’t need a “backup plan” for his court pick.
Trump and the Republicans who narrowly control the Senate must now wait -- for up to a week -- for the report by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, an agency that he’s repeatedly attacked and derided as biased against his administration.
Even without the White House intervention, the FBI agents won’t have subpoena power and will face other constraints on how far they can take the investigation, according to current and former law enforcement officials.
The Kavanaugh inquiry is expected to be tightly controlled by senior FBI officials working with agents in the Washington and Baltimore field offices who will collectively determine who’ll be interviewed, what kind of questions to ask and what, if any, evidence to examine, according to a former senior FBI agent.
But the scope of what will be probed is also going to be informed by the substance of the allegations and what Kavanaugh and his accusers have said publicly, the former agent said.
Agents also won’t have the discretion to pursue new leads on their own. Instead, they will be expected to report back to FBI headquarters on what they have learned. Senior bureau officials will then decide whether the leads should be examined and report their findings to the White House, said the former official who asked not to be identified.
Since the inquiry isn’t a criminal investigation, the FBI won’t be making use of a grand jury, according to another former FBI official. Agents won’t be able to subpoena employment files or records about who rented a beach house or compel witnesses to answer questions.
Yet the FBI could initiate further action on its own if agents uncover evidence of criminal activity or if someone is caught lying to investigators, the former official said.
For example, field agents are likely to ask about Kavanaugh’s use of alcohol in high school and college more than they would in a normal background investigation, a former official said. The judge’s drinking habits was a teenager were discussed at length during Thursday’s Senate hearing. NBC News reported, though, citing sources it didn’t identify, that details of Kavanaugh’s drinking while at Yale will be off limits.
Ramirez, who lives in Colorado, says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a drunken party when they were freshmen at Yale. Swetnick, of Washington, said in a sworn statement released Wednesday that Kavanaugh took part in efforts during high school to get girls intoxicated so that a group of boys could have sex with them.
The more Trump tries to limit the FBI investigation the more it will come back and bite Trump and sink his own Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh for the following reason.
Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, as well as Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who’s been viewed as a possible “yes” vote for Kavanaugh as he runs for re-election in a state where Trump is popular.
Trump could very well sink his own Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and get a "no" vote if these Senators feel they have been snowed by Trump and the White House in this FBI investigation. They not only have to answer to their constituents, but to their own morals and the American people.
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