On Sunday, Former FBI Director James Comey blasted in an op-ed the deadline imposed on the bureau’s probe into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying that “it is idiotic to put a shot clock on the FBI.”
However, he also said that an investigation ending at the end of this week was still better than no investigation at all, even though “the process is deeply flawed, and apparently designed to thwart the fact-gathering process.”
“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,” Comey continued.
At the same time, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein asked the White House and FBI to clarify the scope of the review of Kavanaugh’s background.
“Given the seriousness of the allegations before the Senate, I am writing to request that you provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with a copy of the written directive sent by the White House to the FBI,” she wrote Sunday.
Comey’s piece came amid denials by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders that the White House was “micromanaging” the FBI’s investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against the President’s Supreme Court nominee.
“The White House isn’t intervening. We’re not micromanaging this process. It’s a Senate process. It has been from the beginning, and we’re letting the Senate continue to dictate what the terms look like,” Sanders said on Sunday.
A number of Democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns that the White House is keeping investigators from interviewing certain witnesses, which quickly prompted a response from President Donald Trump, who took to Twitter to attack Democrats.
“Wow! Just starting to hear the Democrats, who are only thinking Obstruct and Delay, are starting to put out the word that the ‘time’ and ‘scope’ of FBI looking into Judge Kavanaugh and witnesses is not enough. Hello! For them, it will never be enough – stay tuned and watch!” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Comey indicated in his op-ed that he was sure investigators would help settle the debate which has largely divided the country, despite their compressed time frame.
“Yes, the alleged incident occurred 36 years ago. But F.B.I. agents know time has very little to do with memory,” Comey wrote. “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.”
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