The FBI, as you know, is all over talking to everybody. And I would expect this is a very high quality person. I would expect it's going to turn out very well for the judge. [00:00:15] Yeah, they have free reign. They're going to do whatever they have to do, whatever it is they do. They'll be doing things that we never even thought of. Spoiler alert they did not have free reign. Now, of course, what President Donald Trump is referring to there is [00:00:31] the investigation into his Supreme Court nominee at the time, Brett Kavanaugh, who was dealing with some pretty serious attempted rape allegations by Doctor Christine Blasey Ford, a woman that he went to college with. [00:00:46] Now it turns out that, the FBI's investigation into the sexual assault allegations against then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was anything but independent. And this is according to a new report that follows a six year long investigation. [00:01:05] Now, as a reminder, the inquiry into Kavanaugh came after testimony by Doctor Christine Blasey Ford in which she accused the judge of groping her and trying to take off her clothes at a party three decades earlier. [00:01:21] There was also another accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who had come forward saying that Kavanaugh had, you know, shoved his genitals into her face at a party when they were at Yale in the early 1980s. I apologize, I should have given you all a trigger warning, [00:01:36] considering the, you know, content here, but the report is now being released. It was produced by Democratic Senator and Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse, and I do want to commend him for refusing to let this situation go, [00:01:52] because this was six years ago and we do have short attention spans. And what happened with Christine Blasey Ford and this sham investigation really bothered me. And to see that there's someone actually keeping an eye on it and following up with it is great. [00:02:08] Now, his findings reveal that despite publicly declaring that the FBI was free to investigate Kavanaugh at their own discretion, the white House never actually authorized the agency to independently probe the sexual misconduct allegations. [00:02:24] Okay. In reality, the white House kept a tight grip on the FBI. Some of the limits that were placed by the Trump White House on this inquiry, on this investigation, were known at the time. The FBI didn't question Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford about the allegations. [00:02:41] They also did not interview the dozens of people who who were provided by lawyers for Blasey Ford and Ramirez, who said that they could have provided corroborating evidence. That is what investigators are supposed to be looking for, corroborating evidence. [00:03:01] But the Trump administration prevented that from happening. The reality was even more damning, by the way. Okay. So the report found that messages to the FBI tip line regarding Kavanaugh were forwarded directly to the white House and never probed, [00:03:18] and that the FBI had no written protocols for the supplemental background investigation ordered by the white House. And I remember at the time, the other thing was they limited the time frame in which the FBI can conduct the investigation. They were given a week, they were given a week. [00:03:34] And when the FBI announced that they had concluded their investigation before the week was even up, I mean, I knew it was a sham. And I think most people who have two brain cells to rub together knew it was a sham. So the report notes that the FBI was instructed by the white House [00:03:54] to talk to ten potential witnesses, and was not given the leeway to pursue corroborating evidence, the absence of which was cited by senators as they narrowly voted to confirm Kavanaugh. Even when senators, by the way, contacted the FBI directly [00:04:11] with the names of people who claimed to have relevant information about Kavanaugh. The FBI did not contact them. They didn't reach out. Then the report described how, two days before voting on Kavanaugh, senators were given about an hour to review more than 1600 pages [00:04:29] of material collected by the FBI, mostly raw information from the tip line. Neither the FBI nor the white House explained whether the tips had been reviewed, according to Senator Whitehouse and the FBI. [00:04:45] You know, they say they were just following protocol. They were following procedure. But as white House explains, assurances that everything was being done by the book and according to standard FBI procedures, omitted the fact that for supplement background investigations, there is [00:05:02] no book and there are no procedures. You simply do what the white House tells you. So John, I would be shocked if you were shocked by this, but I am curious what you think. I'll be serious for a second. [00:05:18] I am a little bit shocked about how they did nothing. Literally nothing. I assumed they did almost nothing. I and I certainly would not have thought that they would have just forwarded all of the evidence that might sink a Scotus nomination to the [00:05:35] people who want him on the Scotus most. That seems insane. And I'll return to that in just a second. But I know a lot of people may have seen that video that you showed of Trump and think that, well, he looks like a big old liar now. But he did say he said he thinks it's going to go really well for Kavanaugh. [00:05:52] And it did. Since they're not going to do an investigation. And he also said that the FBI is going to do things that we've never seen before, which sounds like his normal bragging. But if you think about what we've seen the FBI do in investigations, this kind [00:06:09] of is like nothing we've ever seen before. Don't talk to literally the accused or the accuser. Don't follow up on any specific leads. Hand over all the evidence to the most corrupt party imaginable. Yeah, I've never seen that before, so I think that he was actually pretty honest in that clip. [00:06:25] But I will say, I think if we lived in a sane world, they should do the investigation right now and consider taking Kavanaugh off the court, because the process that put him there is obviously fundamentally corrupt. And like, if you're a conservative and you're watching this, first of all, [00:06:41] I understand that you think that hypocrisy is the most awesome thing ever. So it's not like I'm going to get you with this. But if we found out that this happened to a Democrat nominee to the Supreme Court, that we found out, like, you know, Ketanji Brown Jackson was accused of knifing a guy back in 84. And then we did [00:06:59] an investigation, and then you find out, no, they didn't do no investigation. They didn't look at the murder weapon. They didn't look at the video footage. They didn't do anything. Would you just be like, well, it's too late now? No, no, I mean, definitely not, right? I mean, I think I think we've done a decent job showing that we are willing [00:07:19] to hold our own side accountable. And for those who are fans of Kavanaugh who think Kavanaugh didn't do anything wrong, there's nothing to be worried about. Well, the sham investigation leads to questions in people's minds [00:07:36] because we don't know for sure there wasn't a real investigation. Wouldn't you want a real investigation to be done to clear his good name? Right. It seems as though the Trump administration didn't allow for a real investigation because they were afraid of what they're [00:07:51] going to find, but we'll never know. So let's keep going. There's a few more details here. Now, white House said that the review of the FBI probe took six years because of resistance from both the Trump and Biden administrations. [00:08:07] Now, I'm going to be uncharacteristically charitable to Biden and assume that the reason why he didn't pursue this is because he didn't want it to appear political or politically motivated. I have no idea. Neither wanted to provide correspondence with the FBI, access to FBI officials, or [00:08:26] answer questions about the investigation. Now, until 2021, the only information Democratic senators said they were able to obtain about the procedure for a supplemental background investigation was a publicly accessible YouTube video [00:08:42] explaining how the FBI tip line works. Unbelievable. So. And of course, Republicans are claiming that the report doesn't actually change anything. Gilli Maddox, who's a spokesperson for Senator Chuck Grassley, [00:08:58] a Republican from Iowa who also chaired the Judiciary Committee during the Kavanaugh confirmation, said the report doesn't offer any legitimate substantive new ground. She also said it's released before the November election raises questions about its validity and motive. [00:09:16] The only thing that this is raising questions about is the validity and motive of how the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh was carried out, and it leads to like, again, the sham investigation does the opposite of clearing Kavanaugh's name. It makes one think he definitely did something wrong [00:09:33] and that there's a major cover up and that doesn't really inspire trust in our government or our Supreme Court. That's not great, especially for someone who serves in the Supreme Court currently. And we all know the Supreme Court cares deeply about being viewed as legitimate. [00:09:51] So a good way of being viewed as legitimate is to allow for these investigations to happen. - Final word John. - Yeah. By the way, a lot of the reforms, the Supreme Court that have been considered one of the reasons it would be nice to have a Scotus nomination process that occurs at regular intervals. [00:10:10] Every president gets an expected amount would mean that every single time one opens up, it isn't this end of the world at all costs. We gotta get this thing that results in you being like, I don't care if he raped someone. We got to get him on there. [00:10:26] It shouldn't work that way. And, and also in a general sense, the fact that there's not like a single maybe like Susan Collins or Lisa murkowski might have an issue with this. No one else will is just a reminder that absent 1 or 2 possible examples. [00:10:43] Right right wingers, just rape is not a thing that they overly care about. It's just not a significant thing. Women talking about being sexually assaulted or raped is like a it's more of an inconvenience to have to hear about it than anything else. They just don't think it's serious. Maybe if it's like a migrant, then maybe it's worth looking into. [00:11:02] Maybe if it's someone that hung out with Epstein, as long as it's a Democrat, then maybe it's worth looking into. Outside of that, just don't waste our time by bringing up the fact that you were sexually assaulted, particularly by somebody powerful, influential, rich. Just shut up about it. [00:11:17] That is loud and clear what I'm hearing from them. If you enjoyed this video, that's because of our members. They make us independent. They make us strong and they make us honest. Become a member today by hitting the join button below.