The effort to sink Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation cries out for investigation.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has already made a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding alleged material misstatements by lawyer Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick.
A concerted effort to mislead the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Senate, especially if it involved threats to potential witnesses, could violate several federal criminal statutes, including 18 U.S.C. 1001, 18 U.S.C. 1505 and 18 U.S.C. 1622.
Justice Kavanaugh's opponents seem to have expected a full-fledged criminal-style inquiry into Ms. Ford's allegations, although Senate Democrats had sat on them for months.
That's not how background investigations work.
Nor do FBI background investigators routinely assess individual witness credibility.
The FBI could be asked to conduct background investigations in a manner more comparable to its criminal and intelligence work, where agents will assess witness credibility and use those assessments to guide the focus and course of the inquiry.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/probe-the-effort-to-sink-kavanaugh-11569786380
The Senate Judiciary Committee has already made a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding alleged material misstatements by lawyer Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick.
A concerted effort to mislead the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Senate, especially if it involved threats to potential witnesses, could violate several federal criminal statutes, including 18 U.S.C. 1001, 18 U.S.C. 1505 and 18 U.S.C. 1622.
Justice Kavanaugh's opponents seem to have expected a full-fledged criminal-style inquiry into Ms. Ford's allegations, although Senate Democrats had sat on them for months.
That's not how background investigations work.
Nor do FBI background investigators routinely assess individual witness credibility.
The FBI could be asked to conduct background investigations in a manner more comparable to its criminal and intelligence work, where agents will assess witness credibility and use those assessments to guide the focus and course of the inquiry.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/probe-the-effort-to-sink-kavanaugh-11569786380
No comments:
Post a Comment