The sham investigation

Late Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the F.B.I. probe was over and cleared the way for an important procedural vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to take place on Friday. NBC News reported that dozens of people who said that they had information about Kavanaugh had contacted F.B.I. field offices, but agents had not been permitted to talk to many of them. Several people interested in speaking to the F.B.I. expressed exasperation in interviews with The New Yorker at what they perceived to be a lack of interest in their accounts.

Deborah Ramirez, one of two women who have accused Kavanaugh of sexual abuse, said in an interview that she had been hopeful that her story would be investigated when two agents drove from Denver to Boulder, Colorado, last weekend to interview her at her lawyer’s office. But Ramirez said that she was troubled by what she perceived as a lack of willingness on the part of the Bureau to take steps to substantiate her claims. “I am very alarmed, first, that I was denied an F.B.I. investigation for five days, and then, when one was granted, that it was given on a short timeline and that the people who were key to corroborating my story have not been contacted,” Ramirez said. “I feel like I’m being silenced.”

  New Yorker

That's because, officially, you are.

Several former Yale students who claim to have information regarding the alleged incident with Ramirez or about Kavanaugh’s behavior at Yale said that they had not been contacted by the F.B.I. Kenneth G. Appold was a suitemate of Kavanaugh’s at the time of the alleged incident. He had previously spoken to The New Yorker about Ramirez on condition of anonymity, but he said that he is now willing to be identified because he believes that the F.B.I. must thoroughly investigate her allegation. Appold, who is the James Hastings Nichols Professor of Reformation History at Princeton Theological Seminary, said that he first heard about the alleged incident involving Kavanaugh and Ramirez either the night it occurred or a day or two later. Appold said that he was “one-hundred-per-cent certain” that he was told that Kavanaugh was the male student who exposed himself to Ramirez. He said that he never discussed the allegation with Ramirez, whom he said he barely knew in college. But he recalled details—which, he said, an eyewitness described to him at the time—that match Ramirez’s memory of what happened. “I can corroborate Debbie’s account,” he said in an interview. “I believe her, because it matches the same story I heard thirty-five years ago, although the two of us have never talked.”

[...]

Appold said that he initially asked to remain anonymous because he hoped to make contact first with the classmate who, to the best of his recollection, told him about the party and was an eyewitness to the incident. He said that he had not been able to get any response from that person, despite multiple attempts to do so. The New Yorker reached the classmate, but he said that he had no memory of the incident.

[...]

Appold, who won two Fulbright Fellowships, and earned his Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale in 1994, also recalled telling his graduate-school roommate about the incident in 1989 or 1990. That roommate, Michael Wetstone, who is now an architect, confirmed Appold’s account and said, “it stood out in our minds because it was a shocking story of transgression.”

[...]

[Appold] said he believes that “there were two sides to Brett.” Those who have described the judge as studious and somewhat reserved or shy are correct, he said. He added, “that was true part of the time, but so are the other things that have been said about him. He drank a lot, and when he was drinking he could be aggressive, and belligerent. He wasn’t beating people up, but there was an edge and an obnoxiousness that I could see at the hearings. When I saw clips” of Kavanaugh’s Senate testimony, Appold said, “I remembered it immediately.”

[...]

“The times were different then. Today, I’m an educator, and if something like this happened, I’d know exactly where to go to the Title IX people. But back then there was no place to report these uncomfortable things—we tried to forget about them.” Kavanaugh has argued that, if he had behaved as Ramirez described, the whole campus would have talked about it, but Appold said that, to the contrary, “It was more like, ‘Don’t talk about it.’ ”

[...]

Ramirez said that the F.B.I. agents she spoke to interviewed her in a comprehensive and sensitive manner. Several of their questions appeared to mirror Republican speculation that the allegations against Kavanaugh were coördinated by Democrats or were otherwise politically motivated. (Ramirez said that neither was true.) “They asked me if I’d ever been in touch with Dr. Christine Ford,” Ramirez recalled, “and if I knew how reporters got my name.” She told the agents that she has never had contact with Ford and began receiving calls from reporters unbidden. Ramirez said that her main concern, after her F.B.I. interview, was that the agents who interviewed her might not be the same ones talking to people who could corroborate her account—she felt that continuity was important. But she had not anticipated that people she believed had relevant information wouldn’t even be interviewed.

[...]

Two high-school acquaintances of Kavanaugh’s have also submitted sworn declarations to senators and to the F.B.I. A classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Preparatory School, who asked to remain anonymous because of the intensity of the partisan fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination, submitted a signed declaration to the F.B.I. after visiting the F.B.I. field office nearest his home, where he was told they didn’t do “in-person interviews.” He said that he was hoping to hear something back, but hadn’t yet. In his statement, which his attorney also sent to several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, he described Kavanaugh as part of a clique of high-school athletes, most of whom were on the football team, who “routinely picked on” less physically fit or popular students. He said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh physically attacking another student, but he recalled him doing “nothing to stop the physical and verbal abuse.” Instead, he said, Kavanaugh “stood by and laughed at the victims.” Both Ford and Ramirez have said they remembered Kavanaugh laughing during their ordeals.

And Kavanaugh and his handlers are laughing now, because, once again, they're getting away with it.

[T]he classmate who submitted the statement said that he heard Kavanaugh “talk about Renate many times,” and that “the impression I formed at the time from listening to these conversations where Brett Kavanaugh was present was that Renate was the girl that everyone passed around for sex.”

[...]

Angela Walker, who was in Dolphin’s class at Stone Ridge, also submitted a declaration to the F.B.I. [...] Walker’s declaration described attending a large house party with Georgetown Prep boys, where, she wrote, “A friend from Prep warned me not to go upstairs, where the bedrooms were, cautioning me that it could be dangerous.”

[...]

In addition to Appold, several other former Yale classmates said that they had reached out to the F.B.I. about Kavanaugh but had not received a response. Stephen Kantrowitz, a former Yale classmate, said in a text message that, “No one who lived in Lawrance Hall (so far as I know) has been contacted by the FBI What a charade.”

Indeed.

And, from a Yale roommate:

In 1983, I was one of Brett Kavanaugh’s freshman roommates at Yale University.

[...]

I did not want to come forward. When the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow contacted me while researching a story about Debbie and Brett, I told him that I didn’t see the point. There is no way that Brett will face legal consequences after this much time. Either he will be confirmed or another conservative judge will be. There would be a high cost. I was raised in a Republican family. My mother, who has since passed away, was a Republican state representative in Connecticut. My father owns a MAGA hat. I have close friends who are very conservative. In recent years I have had disagreements over politics with some of these friends and family, but I care deeply about them. My involvement has and will come with personal, professional, and reputational damage.

[...]

Ultimately, I told Farrow that Debbie’s story was believable and that Brett was “frequently, incoherently drunk.” When asked about my comments in the New Yorker at his hearing last week, Judge Kavanaugh seemed to suggest that my account was not credible because “it was a contentious situation” where I “did not like” the third suitemate. He then referenced a prank I pulled on the third suitemate and some redacted portion of his closed-door questioning by Senate Judiciary Committee staff. It’s true that I played a prank on the third roommate. We were not close. But that relationship has no bearing on my ability to observe Kavanaugh’s behavior then and to describe it now.

[...]

I am willing to speak with them about my experiences at Yale with both Debbie [Ramirez] and Brett. I would tell them this: 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.

[...]

As for this round of the investigation: I still haven’t been called, even though they are supposedly looking into Debbie’s case. How will they learn what happened if once again they are not allowed to truly and thoroughly investigate?

[...]

Since the New Yorker story came out, I have been asked for countless interviews by print publications, TV, and online media, the vast majority of which I have resisted. Ultimately I wrote and distributed a statement to minimize the distraction to my personal and business life. In the statement, I wrote that Brett “was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and that he became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk.”

[...]

I do not know if Brett attacked Christine Blasey Ford in high school or if he sexually humiliated Debbie in front of a group of people she thought were her friends. But I can say that he lied under oath. He claimed that he occasionally drank too much but never enough to forget details of the night before, never enough to “black out.” He did, regularly. He said that “boofing” was farting and the “Devil’s Triangle” was a drinking game. “Boofing” and “Devil’s Triangle” are sexual references. I know this because I heard Brett and his friends using these terms on multiple occasions.

[...]

In this case, the lies are not trivial: His lies about sexual terms and his drinking are directly relevant to the accusations of Christine Blasey Ford and Debbie Ramirez, which both involved sexual behavior and heavy drinking. The truth would make him look bad and would bolster the credibility of both of these women. In this climate, had he simply said “I don’t remember” or even “If I did these things in my youth I am sorry,” he might have sailed through the confirmation process. But he lied, under oath, like it was nothing.

[...]

To me it seems very simple. We are deciding if a man is suited to judge others. To hear with compassion and empathy the cases of the vulnerable. As a Supreme Court justice, he would be the last line of legal defense for people who need a champion with unimpeachable judgment. A man who lies effortlessly rather than taking responsibility for his own words and actions is not what we need.

[...]

I can’t imagine that anyone in the Senate wants to confirm an individual to a lifetime appointment on the United States Supreme Court who has demonstrated a willingness to be untruthful under oath about easily verified information.

  James Roche @ Slate

I bet you can now.  If not, just wait until Saturday's vote.  You won't have to imagine any longer.