Christine Blasey Ford came forward and accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party in the 1980’s when they were in high school. She wants the FBI to independently investigate her claim before she testifies in front of the Senate – however, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley has shut this idea down.
“It’s not the FBI’s role to investigate a matter such as this,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Ford’s lawyers on Wednesday.
But Senate Democrats are not asking for a criminal investigation, they are asking for the background check on Kavanaugh to be reopened.
Going through the FBI background check, or “vetting” is a very common procedure for people entering federal positions. During background checks, pretty much every aspect of the person’s life is put under a microscope and carefully examined, from medical histories, taxes, childhoods, business dealings, and love lives.
It is an important procedure to go through because it ensures that the nominee is of good, reliable character and does not pose any security threats to the United States government.
Additionally, if the nominee does not vet himself first and reveal all the big secrets from his past, he could be blackmailed later if evidence of perjury were to emerge.
Background checks used to be something that happened early on; during the George H.W. Bush administration, federal nominees completed background checks before their announcement.
However, in the Kavanaugh case, Republicans are rushing to confirm him without taking the time to thoroughly examine him. They need him before the midterm elections so that they can have a solid right-wing majority in the Supreme Court.
Trump has said “I don’t think the FBI should be involved because they don’t want to be involved, if they wanted to be I would certainly do that” and “this is not really their thing, the senators will do a good job”.
Trump is wrong on two accounts: First, it is, in fact, the FBI’s “thing” to hold background checks on nominees. Secondly, the senators cannot possibly do a good job, because they don’t have an adequate amount of information on Kavanaugh, and Ford’s claim. Republicans have held back a lot of information, 90 percent of documents regarding Kavanaugh’s years in government, which is extremely unfair to the American public.
The Republican party has tried to ignore and undermine the claims against Kavanaugh. They are giving Kavanaugh a very powerful, lifelong position in government, yet they are not taking the time or care to investigate him and make sure he is a qualified, and trustworthy nominee. The government owes it to us, the American public, to do their job right through a fair and constitutional process.
Republicans think Democrats are just trying to stall the vote. But Republicans are putting their party over the safety of the country, and the integrity of the Supreme Court. We deserve nothing less than the search for the truth.
