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All things Kavanaugh - updates and background

Wanted to start an area here for Kavanaugh discussion…Althought he may or may not be confirmed by the end of the week, Oct 5th (Friday), there has been SO MUCH information. Thought it may be worth setting up a separate topic for now.

His public battles for this SCOTUS seat are impacting everyone, and his fall from grace is being seen everywhere.

This was a feather in his cap.

Embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh will not return to teach at > Harvard Law School in January, according to an email administrators sent to Law students Monday evening.

“Today, Judge Kavanaugh indicated that he can no longer commit to teaching his course in January Term 2019, so the course will not be offered,” Associate Dean and Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs Catherine Claypoole wrote in the email, which she sent on behalf of the Law School’s Curriculum Committee.

Kavanaugh and Harvard Law spokespeople could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Kavanaugh’s comments about this nomination process being railroaded by the Democrats and a payback for the Clinton’s influence (?) are strange unto themselves. He was outright rude, dismissive, evasive to Democratic Senators, and did not seem at all ‘judicious.’ This has not gone unnoticed by various judicial and ethics groups.

WASHINGTON — Last week, US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh railed against Democrats in Congress, the Clinton family, and “left-wing opposition groups.” It was a startling display of partisan rhetoric from a judicial nominee — and one that raises ethics questions that are likely to follow him whether he is confirmed or not.

The ethical sticking points for Kavanaugh are multifold whether he joins the Supreme Court or stays on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, where he currently sits. Kavanaugh’s angry jabs at Democrats and liberal groups could be grounds for recusal requests in either court. Ethics complaints have been filed against Kavanaugh in the DC Circuit, including at least one claiming he lied about the sexual assault allegations against him. Ethics experts say there’s no precedent for what happens to those complaints if he’s elevated to the Supreme Court. For now, they’re under the purview of the DC Circuit chief judge — former Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

Confirmation is a political event, [Kavanaugh is] at the center of it, and he testified as a nominee who happens to be a judge, not as a judge,” Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University School of Law, wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News.

Federal judges and Supreme Court justices have to follow federal law when it comes to recusing. The law says judges and justices should step aside from cases where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” and if they have a “personal bias or prejudice.” The more specific the connection to a litigant or potential conflict, the more seriously judges consider recusing. The decision would rest solely with Kavanaugh.

Lower court judges are also subject to a code of conduct that features a more in-depth set of ethics rules, and they can be investigated via the judiciary’s internal conduct review system for alleged violations. Discipline can range from a private talking-to by the chief judge — Garland on the DC Circuit, in Kavanaugh’s case — or a public reprimand to a suspension from hearing cases or, in the most serious cases, a referral to the House of Representatives for potential impeachment proceedings. The federal judiciary doesn’t have the power to remove judges.

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Curious timing on this one…

Text messages suggest Kavanaugh wanted to refute accuser’s claim before it became public

A former classmate of the Supreme Court nominee has reached out to the FBI but hasn’t received a response.

WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.

Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.

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@dragonfly9 Thanks for this. How telling is it that Harvard is disowning Kavanaugh at this point in time – before the confirmation vote? This means he’s definitely being given the boot. He’s trying to pretend it was his decision, but really there’s no way for him to save face on this.

The article contains a link to this letter signed by over 700 alumni who have asked Harvard to rescind Kavanaugh’s teaching appointment.

And the article closes with this:

As of Monday evening, Kavanaugh’s profile appeared to have been scrubbed from the Law School’s public faculty directory.

Ouch! That was fast. I guess Harvard is sending a message to K: “Don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.” :mans_shoe: :door:

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Not a good look…K engaging in a bar dust up -#MeanDrunk

Kavanaugh Was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985 - The New York Times

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This is one of the most comprehensive lists of Kavanaugh’s lies that I’ve come across. It is well documented and includes links to reputable news sources throughout.

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What R’s perceive as an all out threat to their power and their majority standing is that women are a powerful force to be reckoned with, and even more so in the face of any sexual assault charges, which the R’s perceive as almost reckless and spurious charges.

The divide amongst the sexes in terms of who should get to have legislative and judicial powers are illustrated by this Quinnipiac Poll results listed here.

Women oppose his confirmation, 55 percent to 37 percent, while men support it, 49 percent to 40 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll

From President Trump to his namesake son to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the howls of outrage crystallize a strong current of grievance within a party whose leadership is almost entirely white and overwhelmingly male – and which does not make a secret of its fear that demographic shifts and cultural convulsions could jeopardize its grip on power.

This eruption of male resentment now seems likely to play a defining role in the midterm elections just five weeks away, contrasting with a burst of enthusiasm among women propelling Democratic campaigns and inspired by the national #MeToo reckoning over sexual assault and gender roles.

Kavanaugh’s defenders, reflecting widespread feelings among conservatives nationally, are furious about what they see as a broad-brush approach to sexual misconduct allegations. They say the federal judge is being swept up in the #MeToo riptide and unfairly grouped with serial predators — such as actor Bill Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by more than 60 women and was sentenced last week to three to 10 years in prison for drugging and assaulting a victim.

“I think you’re trying to portray him as a stumbling, bumbling drunk, gang rapist, who during high school and college was Bill Cosby,” Graham said Sunday to host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”

Public opinion on Kavanaugh breaks down along gender lines. Women oppose his confirmation, 55 percent to 37 percent, while men support it, 49 percent to 40 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday. The survey found that 48 percent of American voters most believe Ford, while 41 percent most believe Kavanaugh.

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Flake is showing his cards a bit here…but then retracts his statement which was purportedly about K and his level of partisanship.

Speaking with Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, and Democratic Senator Chris Coons at The Atlantic Festival on Tuesday morning,

Flake called the judge’s interactions with lawmakers “sharp and partisan.”

I caught up with Flake briefly as he left the event, and asked if this meant he would not vote to confirm Kavanaugh, even if the FBI cleared him by week’s end. He appeared rattled, and his handlers rushed him into the stairwell. “I didn’t say that …” he stammered. “I wasn’t referring to him.”

We can’t have that on the Court,” said the Arizona senator, who didn’t elaborate on which interactions he was referring to.

Flake’s “gentleman’s agreement” with Coons, from Delaware, led to the FBI reopening its investigation into Kavanaugh late last week. The bureau is examining the sexual-assault allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, who also testified on Thursday.

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Here’s some interesting 'counter narrative, ’ a piece for The Federalist which describes the angles The NYT ‘new’ hit piece on Kavanaugh may look. (It has not been published.)

Tweet in full

@NatashaBertrand

Things we learned from this accidental Federalist scoop: 1) Kavanaugh referred to himself and his friends as "loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us"
2) He signed a letter as “Bart.” (see: "Bart O’Kavanaugh" in Mark Judge’s memoir, ‘Wasted.’)

“I think we are unanimous that any girls we can beg to stay there are welcomed with open …” he wrote.

The letter addressed to Patrick “P.J.” Smyth was signed by Kavanaugh as “Bart,” which friends say was a nickname P.J. used with him.

FFFFF, Bart,” the letter closed, using an inside reference to a speech tic of one of the boys’ friends.

Classmates contacted by The Federalist confirm that Kavanaugh organized “Beach Week,” which to this day remains a popular rite of passage in the D.C. metro area for public and private school students alike. The letter was apparently shared with Georgetown Prep alumni years later as an example of the camaraderie and shared hijinks of Kavanaugh and his classmates. One person told The Federalist that the letter was shared as an homage to Kavanaugh, who even then was seen as the most organized individual in a school full of them.

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Oh wait…there’s more! WTFery. This is the NYT HIT PIECE that The Federalist mentions above.

A letter and HS connection Urgo who may have been the type to have spiked the punch with "Killer Q’s and 151) - Will attach photo from Yearbook.

Parties, in the backyards of classmates’ suburban homes when their parents were away, would often attract hundreds of students from nearby private schools, his classmates recall. Five or 10 kegs would be procured and, if all went as planned, drained by the end of the night.

One night during his senior year, according to classmates who witnessed it, Judge Kavanaugh triumphantly hoisted an empty beer keg above his head, in recognition that he and his friends were well on their way to reaching their goal of polishing off 100 kegs during the academic year — an achievement they later boasted about in their yearbook.

Four Georgetown Prep classmates said they saw Judge Kavanaugh and his friends partake in binge-drinking rituals many weekends in which other partygoers saw them inebriated, even having difficulty standing. Three of those classmates signed a July letter, along with more than 150 other alumni, that endorsed him for the Supreme Court.

Through his lawyers, Judge Kavanaugh declined to comment for this article, other than to say of his letter: “This is a note I wrote to organize ‘Beach Week’ in the summer of 1983.”

(check article for photo)


Judge Kavanaugh, an only child and sports fanatic, surrounded himself in high school with athletes. Among his closest friends, classmates said, were Mr. Judge, Christopher C. Garrett and Don Urgo Jr. Other members of the clique included Mr. Gaudette and DeLancey Davis.

“Academically, athletically and socially, we all became literally almost like brothers,” Mr. Urgo said in an interview with The Times in July. He got to know Judge Kavanaugh as a fellow altar boy in elementary school. “We had a particular esprit de corps, a zest for life, as a group.”

They played basketball and board games. They also drank.

“It was part of the social life,” said Tobin Finizio, now a radiologist who was then the football team’s quarterback. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s, if you look at the statistics, underage drinking was fairly prevalent. We look at it now and say, ‘Oh my God, that was crazy.’”

Judge Kavanaugh — nicknamed “Bart” after a Georgetown Prep teacher garbled “Brett” — sometimes acted as a restraining influence. One night, a friend named Sean Feeley was out of control. Judge Kavanaugh pulled him aside and whispered three words: “Come on, Sean.” Mr. Feeley today credits Judge Kavanaugh with knowing how to calm classmates without them losing face.

Judge Kavanaugh and his friends had their own language and traditions. There was Mr. Garrett, nicknamed early on as “Squee” because of his resemblance to an upperclassman with a similar last name.

When he drank, Mr. Garrett would stutter words that began with the letter F. It became such a joke that many football teammates, including Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Garrett himself, had “FFFFF” references in their personal yearbook pages. Mr. Garrett, now a middle-school teacher in Georgia, sometimes hosted gatherings, including one when the Washington Redskins won the 1983 Super Bowl. Classmates said some seniors were too hung over to attend school the next day.

Another football player, Mr. Davis, was the heartthrob of the bunch, classmates said. They thought he looked like the singer Rick Springfield. Judge Kavanaugh, who didn’t have a car, often car-pooled to school with Mr. Davis, now the president of a Colorado water-distribution company.

Mr. Urgo — “Donny” — had been friends with Judge Kavanaugh since childhood, biking around the neighborhood and trading baseball cards. After high school, he and Judge Kavanaugh remained close, cramming for the Maryland bar exam and attending Washington Nationals games together. Mr. Urgo now helps run his family’s hotel business.

Judge Kavanaugh — a standout student, captain of the basketball team and a master of the quip, according to one teacher — was especially close to Mr. Judge, a fixture of the school’s party scene. Dr. Blasey said that Mr. Judge was in the room and jumped onto the bed during the alleged 1982 assault.

Mr. Judge was widely perceived as a goofball with a big mouth. “He was a clown,” said Richard Holtz, a classmate and friend of Mr. Judge’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s. Once, before a home football game, Mr. Judge and some classmates chugged beers and then dressed up in blue-and-white cheerleader skirts and pranced around the field, a moment that was captured in the school’s yearbook.

Timothy Don, who car-pooled to school with Mr. Judge, said he would sometimes stop at 7-Eleven on the way home to buy a beer. “He was one of these kids who you could wind up and set off like a top and watch him go spinning out,” Mr. Don said, recalling Mr. Judge’s nervous laugh and how he would spontaneously jump onto his friends’ shoulders.

In a 2005 memoir, “God and Man at Georgetown Prep,” Mr. Judge said the school was “positively swimming in alcohol, and my class partied with gusto — often right under the noses of our teachers.”

“I think we are unanimous that any girls we can beg to stay there are welcomed with open…,” he wrote, his ellipsis at the end leaving certain things unsaid. He noted that the boys should kick out anyone who didn’t belong: “The danger of eviction is great and that would suck because of the money and because this week has big potential. (Interpret as wish.)”

Judge Kavanaugh signed the letter: “FFFFF, Bart.

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This is Donald Joseph Urgo. He went to Georgetown Prep with Brett Kavanaugh.

Brett Kavanaugh was accused of spiking punch with Quaaludes and Bacardi 151 to take sexual advantage of women.

Urgo lists in his yearbook “Killer Qs and 151.”

The FBI has been told not to investigate.

https://t.co/FhEuU5eoxP

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Kavanaugh’s support continues to erode.

Michael Proctor and Mark Osler wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that they can no longer support Kavanaugh’s confirmation because of the “nature” of his testimony in front of the committee last week while addressing accusations of sexual misconduct.

“In our view that testimony was partisan, and not judicious, and inconsistent with what we expect from a Justice of the Supreme Court, particularly dealing with a co-equal branch of government," they wrote. . . .

Proctor and Osler were previously among 27 of Kavanaugh’s classmates who in August wrote a letter to Grassley and Feinstein advocating for Kavanaugh. In that letter, they and the other signatories wrote they “firmly believe that Judge Kavanaugh would make decisions thoughtfully, honestly and impartially.”

Note that Mark Osler is a highly regarded legal scholar and is a law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in St. Paul. According to Wikipedia, “His work has been profiled by The American Prospect, Rolling Stone and CBS News.”

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To me, Kavanaugh’s sign-off to his friends is especially damning because it is yet further substantiation that he lied under oath when he claimed “FFFFF” was a reference to the way in which a friend stuttered when he was drunk. In reality, its primary meaning to this group of friends was a lewd and demeaning reference to women (which I leave readers to look up for themselves if they care to – its actual meaning is not relevant to the point I’m making here).

Suffice it to say that when you close a letter, you close it with a salutation, such as “Sincerely Yours,” or a slogan such as “Remember the Alamo,” or an endearment such as “Sealed With a Kiss” – or something like that. You might shorten your sign-off by condensing it into an acronym when the person you’re addressing is very familiar with that acronym. For example, “Sealed with a Kiss” becomes “SWAK.” What you don’t do is sign off of a letter by making a stuttering sound. So Kavanaugh’s use of “FFFFF” as a sign-off makes it obvious that it was not a stuttering sound, but an acronym whose meaning was well known among his friends – a kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge reference.

Using crude references may not be disqualifying to a position on the Supreme Court, but lying about it under oath is.

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Three former law clerks for Brett Kavanaugh who wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year expressing support for his nomination have written to clarify they are “deeply troubled” by the allegations of sexual assault against him.
There has been so many pieces of damning evidence against Kavanaugh, that three of his former judicial clerks have requested an" independent and thorough investigation."

The R’s, McGahn, T it looks like are putting the breaks on how much of an independent investigation it will be…stating that the FBI investigation will end tomorrow.

In a letter to the Judiciary panel reported by HuffPost on Tuesday, former clerks Will Dreher, Bridget Fahey and Rakim Brooks said that an expanded FBI investigation into allegations from Christine Blasey Ford and two other women is merited.

“We write to clarify that, like many Americans, we have been deeply troubled by those allegations and the events surrounding them and were encouraged by the initiation of a formal FBI investigation,” the three wrote in their letter.

We hope, for the good of everyone involved, that the investigation will be independent and thorough,” they continued.

FBI Probe of Kavanaugh Is Expected to Wrap Up Very Soon

People familiar with the process said Tuesday that the FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh could wrap up very soon, well ahead of the end-of week deadline.

GOP aides on the Hill and another person familiar with the process said they were expecting the bureau to conclude its report as soon as late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Agents had interviewed at least four key people as of Tuesday in its background investigation of Judge Kavanaugh. The White House had given the bureau until Friday to wrap up the probe.

Senators would then be shown the FBI’s findings, but it wasn’t clear if the public would get a look as well.

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Oct 2, 2018 at 3:52 pm ET
Highlights
Letter Signed by Nearly 400 Law Professors Decries Kavanaugh’s ‘Lack of Judicial Temperament’

Brett Kavanaugh’s fiery appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week got failing marks from more than 560 law professors at nearly 100 schools in an open letter saying the Supreme Court nominee failed to demonstrate the judicial temperament required by the position he seeks.

“We regret that we feel compelled to write to you to provide our views that at the Senate hearings on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018, the Honorable Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court, and certainly for elevation to the highest court of this land,” the letter reads.

Martha Minow, who was dean of Harvard Law School while Judge Kavanaugh taught there, is among the prominent signatories, along with such scholars as Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School, Judith Resnik of Yale Law School and Michael Dorf of Cornell Law School, who like Judge Kavanaugh once clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh. But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that Judge Kavanaugh did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land,” the letter reads.

It organically came together, the result of a surge of law professors remarking on Judge Kavanaugh’s lack of judicial temperament at the hearings,” said one of the signers, Prof. Bernard Harcourt of Columbia Law School. The letter remains open for additional signatures through Thursday.

Jess Bravin

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Wow, just wow. Seems like Kavanaugh just burned up his career with all the anger and disdain he displayed throughout the proceedings. I guess it’s Supreme Court or bust? Who am I kidding, he could always just become a lobbyist.

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moved this to Who’s Running the Narrative…

This post moved

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like his dear old dad. :zipper_mouth_face:

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It gets worse…During the Ken Starr investigation into the Clintons, particularly the death of Vince Foster, who was closely aligned with the Clintons, Kavanaugh was part of the investigation team. Article from Ambrose Evans - Pritchard…which I have excerpted here…but explained in full via the link below.

Kavanaugh did a lot of the digging…and leaking from Grand Jury testimony. His release of photos, were startling…because there was a smear campaign going on, to suggest that Vince Foster was shot, instead of a victim of his own hand, suicide.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is International Business Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels.

2 OCTOBER 2018 • 11:33 PM BST

Twenty-three years ago I crossed swords with a younger Brett Kavanaugh in one of the weirdest and most disturbing episodes of my career as a journalist.

What happened leaves me in no doubt that he lacks judicial character and is unfit to serve on the US Supreme Court for the next thirty years or more, whatever his political ideology.

To my surprise, the incident has suddenly become a second front in his nomination saga on Capitol Hill. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has accused him of violating secrecy laws by revealing the details of a federal grand jury.

Disclosing grand jury information is against the law,” she told Politico. She said it also showed he had misled the Senate by assuring categorically that he had never leaked grand jury material to journalists.

Sen Feinstein released a ‘smoking gun’ document from the archive files of the Starr investigation. It shows Mr Kavanaugh’s efforts to suppress a news story about his wild cross-examination of a witness, including a wayward discussion of “genitalia” that particularly worried him.

This piqued my interest since I am named in the document and the witness – Patrick Knowlton – was in a sense ‘my witness’.

Mr Kavanaugh was then a cocky 30 year-old from the affluent WASP suburbs of Northwest Washington, very much the country club boy with a high sense of his status, and Georgetown Prep and Yale Law School behind him, though only with a humdrum Cum Laude. If anybody was going to wind up my hard-scrabble, salt-of-America witness, it was this child of privilege.

This is not the place to revisit the Foster case, the electric third rail of US politics. But it is worth noting two points that touch on Mr Kavanaugh.

Few people are aware that the US federal prosecutor handling the death investigation at the outset, Miquel Rodriguez, had resigned earlier from the Starr investigation after a bitter dispute.

His resignation letter – later leaked – said he was prevented from pursuing investigative leads, that FBI witness statements did not reflect what witnesses had said, that the suicide verdict was premature, and that his grand jury probe was shut down just as he was beginning to uncover evidence. An informed source told me his work had been sabotaged by his own FBI agents.

The nub of the dispute was over compelling evidence of a wound in Foster’s neck, which contradicted the official version that Foster shot himself in the mouth and had essentially been suppressed. The key crime scene photos had vanished and the FBI labs said others were over-exposed and useless.

Mr Rodriguez, by then suspicious, slipped them to the Smithsonian Institution and had them enhanced. One showed a black stippled ring like a gunshot wound in the side of Foster’s neck. This remains secret but I have seen it.

The photo was pivotal. It confirmed what several people who handled the body had originally stated. I interviewed the first rescue worker on the scene and when I asked him about the mouth wound, he grabbed me, and said with frightening intensity: “listen to me buddy, Foster was shot right here,” jabbing his finger into my neck. He said the FBI had pressured him too into changing his story and that official narrative was a pack of lies.

Mr Kavanaugh’s reaction to the findings of his colleague can be found in the stash of released documents from the Starr inquiry. One says in his hand-written notes: “startling discovery”, “blew up portions of photo – trauma to the neck on rt side”, “appears to be bullet hole”.

Mr Kavanaugh faced a choice. He chose to go with the establishment rather than stick up for his colleague. This proved good for his career. He took over the grand jury, by then a legacy showpiece. His treatment of my witness revealed his colours.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sinister-battle-brett-kavanaugh-over-202425923.html

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What’s been done…and probably what won’t be done.
The ones who were to be interviewed were - Judge, Debbie Ramirez, as well as Chris Garrett (Squi - and who Whelan pushed as the assaulter, but was quickly denied), PJ Smyth

FBI agents have completed a first batch of interviews of four individuals closest to the alleged events, and the White House has given the bureau a green light to conduct some further interviews, according to the people familiar with the matter.

On Tuesday, the FBI moved beyond those initial four people, interviewing Tim Gaudette, a Georgetown Preparatory School classmate of Kavanaugh. Gaudette’s attorney, Kenneth Eichner, said an FBI interview took place but declined to comment further. Gaudette’s home was the site of a July 1, 1982, party that Kavanaugh references on his calendar and has become the focus of lawmakers’ concerns.

FBI agents have also interviewed Mark Judge, a key Kavanaugh high school friend who has denied any knowledge of a teenage gathering like the one described by Kavanaugh’s first accuser.

In the interview, Judge also denied recent allegations leveled by Julie Swetnick, saying he had no knowledge of anything like what she had claimed — that he, Kavanaugh or other male friends tried at house parties to get girls drunk in order to take advantage of them, according to two people familiar with the interview.

Another friend from Kavanaugh’s high school days, Chris Garrett, has also completed an FBI interview, according to Garrett’s lawyer, William M. Sullivan Jr., who declined to comment further.

The White House and FBI “are being very careful with each other,” said one person familiar with the matter, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. “Everyone realizes that they are under a huge amount of scrutiny, and will be when it’s over, too.”

When the FBI met one of ­Kavanaugh’s accusers, Deborah Ramirez, in Boulder, Colo., this past weekend, they sent two agents, and a supervisory agent waited in an adjoining room, according to people familiar with the matter.

John Clune, an attorney for Ramirez, said Tuesday on Twitter that his client spoke with the FBI for more than two hours Sunday in a “detailed and productive interview.” The agents “were clearly motivated to investigate the matter in any way they were permitted,” he added. But he asserted that Ramirez had provided the names and contact information of more than 20 witnesses who might be able to corroborate her allegation that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when they were at Yale, and that, as far as Clune knew, the FBI had not contacted any of them as of Tuesday.

Discussions between the FBI and the White House are complicated by a number of factors — the president’s long-running distrust of the agency over its Russia probe, the intense criticism by members of Congress of the FBI’s handling of politically sensitive investigations, and the added difficulty of conducting an inquiry that could tip the scales in deciding who becomes the next member of the Supreme Court.

Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who said she was assaulted by Kavanaugh when they were teens and who testified to the Senate last week, wrote FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Tuesday to say they were concerned the FBI had not sought an interview with her.

It is inconceivable that the FBI could conduct a thorough investigation of Dr. Ford’s allegations without interviewing her, Judge Kavanaugh, or the witnesses we have identified in our letters to you,” the lawyers wrote, demanding an immediate answer to what they said were days of silence from the FBI.

The bureau declined to comment.

The Kavanaugh investigation is being led by the FBI’s Security Division, a component of the Human Resources Branch that is normally tasked with handling background checks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-navigates-political-minefield-and-deadline-in-kavanaugh-inquiry/2018/10/02/315aa59c-c67c-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html?utm_term=.5cfce5517c6b

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