After Sham FBI Investigation, GOP Moves Ahead with Kavanaugh Nomination

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

The FBI has completed its background report on its investigation of allegations against Brett Kavanaugh and handed over said report to the White House, despite having failed to interview dozens of potential witnesses to Kavanaugh's alleged sexual assaults, including Christine Blasey Ford.

If it wasn't already evident that the investigation was a sham with no purpose other than providing Republicans with the ability to say the allegations had not been corroborated, the fact that the investigation into a sexual assault allegation didn't include an interview with the primary eyewitness should leave no doubt.

It's only because of sinister rape culture narratives about women being vengeful liars who routinely invent allegations of sexual assault that it isn't considered absurd in the extreme that an alleged crime could be investigated without even talking to the victim.

Naturally, the White House immediately announced that it "has found no corroboration of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after examining interview reports from the FBI's latest probe into the judge's background."

Raj Shah, spokesman for the White House, said in a statement early Thursday morning: "The White House has received the Federal Bureau of Investigation's supplemental background investigation into Judge Kavanaugh, and it is being transmitted to the Senate."

He added that senators "have been given ample time to review this seventh background investigation." Mr. Shah continued: "With this additional information, the White House is fully confident the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court."

And Republican Senate leadership naturally agrees: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already "filed cloture on the Kavanaugh nomination, setting up a Friday cloture vote and a final confirmation vote 30 hours later."

If Senate Republicans do confirm Brett Kavanaugh, it will be in spite of his poor temperament and overt partisanship; in spite of multiple allegations of sexual assault; in spite of assertions that he lied under oath to the Senate during his nomination hearings; in spite of multiple religious organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore, protesting his confirmation; in spite of more than 1,000 law professors signing a letter stating that the Senate should not confirm him; and in spite of only 33 percent of Americans supporting Kavanaugh's confirmation.

If they confirm him, despite all of that, Republicans will be communicating more loudly than ever previously that they are totally fucking done with even the appearance of democratic leadership.

I'll just quickly observe once again that the Republican Party continues to behave as though they will never have to be accountable to voters ever again. And they're doing it 34 days before the midterms.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) October 3, 2018

And like deplorable cultists cheered Donald Trump as he publicly mocked Christine Blasey Ford, they will cheer when Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, after countless survivors told our stories and pleaded with Republicans not to empower an abuser.

This has been a protracted display of dominance; their revenge on uppity women. Yes, they want Kavanaugh because he will be their lackey on the Supreme Court, but they also want to see through his nomination despite all the reasons to replace him because to confirm him now will be a magnificent act of malice.

And, as I am obliged to observe with terrifying frequency, malice is the animating centerpiece of the Republican agenda. Or, as Adam Serwer put it at the Atlantic: The Cruelty Is the Point.

Whether Kavanaugh will be a good jurist, or even as corrupt a jurist as they expect him to be, is wholly beside the point now. Now, the objective is exclusively about winning while delivering as much pain as possible to their opponents.

Malice animates them. They are sadists. Harm is the point.

No wonder they fancy Kavanaugh.