Despite limitations and partisan attacks, the bureau can find out a lot about the Kavanaugh accusations in a week.
By James Comey
Mr. Comey is the former F.B.I. director.
The F.B.I. is back in the middle of it.
When we were handed the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2015, the
bureau’s deputy director said to me, “You know you are totally screwed,
right?” He meant that, in a viciously polarized political environment,
one side was sure to be furious with the outcome. Sure enough, I saw a
tweet declaring me “a political hack,” although the author added, tongue
in cheek: “I just can’t figure out which side.”
And
those were the good old days. President Trump’s decision to order a
one-week investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett
Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, comes in a time of almost
indescribable pain and anger, lies and attacks.
We live in a world where the president
routinely attacks the F.B.I. because he fears its work. He calls for his
enemies to be prosecuted and his friends freed. We also live in a world
where a sitting federal judge channels the president by shouting
attacks at the Senate committee considering his nomination and demanding
to know if a respected senator has ever passed out from drinking. We
live in a world where the president is an accused serial abuser of
women, who was caught on tape bragging about his ability to assault
women and now likens the accusations against his nominee to the many
“false” accusations against him.
Most
disturbingly, we live in a world where millions of Republicans and
their representatives think nearly everything in the previous paragraph
is O.K.
In that world, the F.B.I. is now being
asked to investigate, on a seven-day clock, sexual assaults that the
president says never happened, that some senators have decried as a sham
cooked up to derail a Supreme Court nominee, and that other senators
believe beyond all doubt were committed by the nominee.
If
truth were the only goal, there would be no clock, and the
investigation wouldn’t have been sought after the Senate Judiciary
Committee already endorsed the nominee. Instead, it seems that the
Republican goal is to be able to say there was an investigation and it
didn’t change their view, while the Democrats hope for incriminating
evidence to derail the nominee.
Although the process is deeply flawed,
and apparently designed to thwart the fact-gathering process, the F.B.I.
is up for this. It’s not as hard as Republicans hope it will be.
F.B.I.
agents are experts at interviewing people and quickly dispatching leads
to their colleagues around the world to follow with additional
interviews. Unless limited in some way by the Trump administration, they
can speak to scores of people in a few days, if necessary.
They
will confront people with testimony and other accounts, testing them
and pushing them in a professional way. Agents have much better nonsense
detectors than partisans, because they aren’t starting with a
conclusion.
Yes, the alleged
incident occurred 36 years ago. But F.B.I. agents know time has very
little to do with memory. They know every married person remembers the
weather on their wedding day, no matter how long ago. Significance
drives memory. They also know that little lies point to bigger lies.
They know that obvious lies by the nominee about the meaning of words in
a yearbook are a flashing signal to dig deeper.
Once
they start interviewing, every witness knows the consequences. It is
one thing to have your lawyer submit a statement on your behalf. It is a
very different thing to sit across from two F.B.I. special agents and
answer their relentless questions. Of course, the bureau won’t have
subpoena power, only the ability to knock on doors and ask questions.
But most people will speak to them. Refusal to do so is its own kind of
statement.
Agents will summarize every witness
encounter in a detailed report called a 302, and then synthesize all the
interviews into an executive summary for the White House. Although the
F.B.I. won’t reach conclusions, their granular factual presentation will
spotlight the areas of conflict and allow decision makers to reach
their own conclusions.
It is idiotic
to put a shot clock on the F.B.I. But it is better to give professionals
seven days to find facts than have no professional investigation at
all. When the week is up, one team (and maybe both) will be angry at the
F.B.I. The president will condemn the bureau for being a corrupt nest
of Clinton-lovers if they turn up bad facts. Maybe Democrats will
similarly condemn agents as Trumpists if they don’t. As strange as it
sounds, there is freedom in being totally screwed. Agents can just do
their work. Find facts. Speak truth to power.
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