Posted on 10/06/2018 6:01:42 AM PDT by reaganaut1
WASHINGTON — An exasperated President Trump picked up the phone to call the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, last Sunday. Tell the F.B.I. they can investigate anything, he told Mr. McGahn, because we need the critics to stop.
Not so fast, Mr. McGahn said.
Mr. McGahn, according to people familiar with the conversation, told the president that even though the White House was facing a storm of condemnation for limiting the F.B.I. background check into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a wide-ranging inquiry like some Democrats were demanding — and Mr. Trump was suggesting — would be potentially disastrous for Judge Kavanaugh’s chances of confirmation to the Supreme Court.
It would also go far beyond the F.B.I.’s usual “supplemental background investigation,” which is, by definition, narrow in scope.
The White House could not legally order the F.B.I. to rummage indiscriminately through someone’s life, Mr. McGahn told the president. And without a criminal investigation to pursue, agents could not use search warrants and subpoenas to try to get at the truth.
Mr. Trump backed down, although he said publicly the next day that the F.B.I. “should interview anybody that they want within reason.” But the episode on Sunday was further evidence of the confusion, including on the part of the president, about what would happen after Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, forced a one-week delay in the confirmation vote of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by calling for a new F.B.I. investigation.
From the start, there were different expectations. Democrats hoped for a full investigation into the allegations, even as they were skeptical that one would occur and angrily said on Friday that the White House had quashed it. In all, 10 people were interviewed, and an 11th declined to cooperate.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
McGahn knows what he is talking about.
Look at the byline...i see names who got leaks from comey and crew.
You know they’re desperate to undermine the credibility of the FBI report when they actually give Trump credit for ordering a more expansive investigation than was done.
Um, the accusers could give no time, no date, no location, and there were no witnesses that would admit to being present. What was there to investigate?
The drinking accusations were just an add-on after the assault allegations fell apart, and being drunk isn’t a crime anyway.
This was just a setup by a bunch of liars out to smear a good man for political reasons.
How fast you become a foe in the rat world
Too bad, so sad...
The tone of this piece seems to be that Trump the Fascist tried to weaponize the FBI to do an illegal investigation against Kavanaugh and the FBI had to inform the president of the limitations under the law and then Fascist Trump was forced to back down and accept the reality that only a limited investigation would be permissible.
Huh?
(Hillary chuckles)
Wait a criminal scale investigation requires an actual criminal complaint!!? That seems so limiting. After all an accusations is proof enough of skullduggery. Darn that ole Constitution it keeps interfering with progress.
One would think the NYSlimes would stop digging here somewhere.
What the domestic enemies wanted was for every Kavanaugh hater to be interviewed, they wanted any wacko off the street making a claim just to harm Kavanaugh in to be taken seriously and if that happened the domestic enemies would have won, they would held up the nomination all the way till 2020
There is plenty of criminal investigation to pursue here and I hope the FBI is pursuing. We can’t just cut a notch in our belt. We need to cut the heart out of the beast so our lives and fortunes are no longer at risk to these Bolshevik totalitarians.
This seems to be a good write up. I could quibble with a few adjectives but overall it seems to do a good job of explaining a thourough re-review of the investigation. It doesn’t seem to be opinionated.
They say that like it ia a bad thing.
“according to people familiar with the conversation” Stopped reading right there.
i.e. unnamed sources.
In other words, “We made this up.”
The limit the democrats wanted was when either
1) FBI finds something to disqualify Kavanaugh
or
2) A democrat wins the presidential election
A “journalist” organization would point that out even in an op/ed - they had enough quotes from D senators (even Schumer) to support that conclusion. And maybe even do some research and come up with some alternative limits that would be more reasonable than Trump’s or the Ds while respecting the facts that
* the elected president gets to choose
* the elected senate gets to approve (or not)
* voters deserve to be represented according to laws and rules (elections matter and the Reid Rule means the senate we elected only needs 50 votes)
* the court is missing a justice so time does matter to those of us who are currently represented in DC
I see that it took three libtard weaklings to lift, carry and dump the BS on the pages of the flailing Slimes.
The was not even a single interview about the Lindbergh kidnapping. Limited and incomplete.
So either Trump or McGahn gave transcripts of their phone conversation to the Slimes? Uh huh.
Oh, I see, “people familiar with the conversation.” Uh huh.
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