Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse dropped a bombshell Thursday, one that might cost FBI Director Christopher Wray his job, or lead to a third Trump impeachment or even possible obstruction of justice charges against Trump. We don’t know, we suspect that there is very little precedent as to how to handle the FBI and White House seemingly burying highly relevant information in an investigation requested by the Senate.
According to a release by Sen. Whitehouse:
Washington, DC – Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray last evening requesting additional information on the FBI’s 2018 supplemental background investigation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The senators’ request follows a letter from the Bureau to Whitehouse and Coons revealing new details on the Kavanaugh background investigation, including that the FBI gathered over 4,500 tips in relation to the investigation without any apparent further action by FBI investigators. The Bureau also confirmed that tips from the tip line were instead provided to the Trump White House Counsel’s office, where their fate is unknown.
So, 4500 tips relating to Kavanaugh get shuffled over to Trump’s White House Counsel and their fate remains “unknown”? Sounds like a cover-up.
“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to . . . allegations’ of s*xual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored,” the senators write in their letter sent today. “If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all.”
Notice, the Senators recognize that Wray might have had his hands tied and they’re giving him an out. They are giving him room to breathe if he was essentially told “Do Not Do Anything.” This brings us back around to Trump. If the Senate requests further information relevant to a background check for a SCOTUS nominee, only to have a president interfere and keep that information from the Senate? That comes awfully close to obstruction of justice, if not way across the line.
And the money shot:
Nearly two years later and after repeated follow-up requests, the FBI finally responded to Whitehouse and Coons’s questions. The June 30, 2021 letter from the FBI Office of Congressional Affairs revealed new information on the Kavanaugh investigation: that Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination “was the first time that the FBI set-up a tip line for a nominee undergoing Senate confirmation,” and that tip line received “over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions.” The FBI apparently pursued none of these tips. Instead, by the FBI’s own account, it merely “provided all relevant tips” to Trump’s Office of White House Counsel, the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation.
So no matter what might have been submitted, “highly relevant,” and “highly credible” or not, the White House was the chokepoint? We know Trump wanted Kavanaugh badly. Kav was the one who wrote that a president couldn’t be investigated while in office. Trump has, also – of late, been bragging that he saved Kavanaugh, no firm would’ve hired him and he couldn’t go back to his old job. Are they related?
A real bombshell that could be just the tip of the iceberg.
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