It Could Happen Here - How Trump Rigged an FBI Investigation for Brett Kavanaugh

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Mia, Sophie and Robert relive the horror of the Kavanaugh hearings and discover how Trump made the FBI conduct a fake "investigation" to clear him. Sources: https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/KavanaughReport_final.pdf https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh-misogyny.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/ https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article214604235.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/politics/joe-biden-anita-hill.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Calls on media. What's Brett, my Cavanaugh's. I'm Robert Evans, and this is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. With me today is Sophie Lichterman and Mia Wong. We're going to be talking about a guy who is near

and dear to my heart because the second to the last conversation I ever had with my mom was about Brett Kavanaugh. Mia, what are we going to learn today? Oh boy. Oh my god. Have you done the What's Brett-ing My Kavanaugh before? I'm certain I haven't. Why would I have? I don't know. It felt oddly familiar. So if he has, somebody let me know. Thank you. Yeah. Tell us the good and the bad. Yeah.

We already know the ugly. Yeah. I'm body shaming Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah, that's right, motherfucker. That's right, motherfucker. The worst consequences he's ever going to suffer are this bad news cycle and me saying something that's not legally defamatory yeah and if he wants to fucking prove it you can sue me over it he has a sweet gig for life yeah he's set he's set bro yeah yeah he sucks so bad that even

like you know midwest dads hate him so at least there's that yeah he's he's really rancid and i so i i think i think the place to start with this actually is not with kavanaugh but with trump because what we're talking about today is a thing that we kind of knew was true but didn't know the extent of until now which is that the supposed fbi investigation into everything that Brett Kavanaugh did was, like, fake and deliberately fucked by Trump specifically. Like, Trump specifically told them to just, like, not do the investigation. And so they didn't do the investigation and nothing happened. This is sort of how he got confirmed. And I think the interesting thing about this, partially, is because I hate Brett Kavanaugh.

Yeah, he sucks. He's the worst guy. Kavanaugh. Yeah, he sucks. The worst guy. A real dick. Yeah. But I think the other thing about him is like, I think I feel like everyone has forgotten what it was like to live under Trump. I agree. Because there was just so much shit happening all the time. Like every single every single day was like a new one of these things. And I want to go back to what like one week of Trump was like,

because every single fucking week was like this. And it was the most miserable thing. So who is Brett Kavanaugh? He's one of the nine assholes who get to decide whether we all have rights. For people who've sort of forgotten his background. So he's like an old, old old like 90s era kind of like protege of the 90s republican ghouls he's like one of the people who helps ken star do the like monica lewinsky trial like he's a he's involved in a whole bunch of sort of like republican rat

fucking operations he's also and i think this one's actually important to remember as you go up to the election uh cavanaugh was part of the legal team that helped bush do the original stop the steal in 2000 just like straight up stole the election in florida love that these guys keep getting jobs as opposed to i don't know getting the punishment for treason and he's only 59 years old yeah he's so young for that job. We have like 40 more years of him. If you ever wanted a clear reason why we shouldn't do things, like the death penalty for treason, it's because when people commit

treason, nothing happens to them. And when people, I don't know, agitate for Puerto Rican independence, they get executed. That's what happens with those laws. I just... Bad. Avoid laws existing. they get executed like that's yeah that's that's what happens with those laws i just bad avoid laws existing yeah and especially avoid all of your laws being dictated by a bunch of uh a bunch of fucking serial predators yeah and this gets us to so kavanaugh's appointment was very very close the republicans at the time they controlled the senate but they

had a 52 to 48 margin and a lot of those kind of marginal senators were like there were there was there was a more realistic chance of it not happening than typically yeah but they still fucked it in the end oh yeah 100 of course but you know the the reason the reason why it was close is as i think most people probably remember cavanaugh is a serial sexual predator he essentially assaulted so many fucking people people saw him do it there were times when he was the only fucking person there who did there were times we did it in crowds he He definitely, he 100% did it. And if he wants to fucking sue me about it, like, I'll see you in court, motherfucker. And while we're here, Clarence Thomas, also a predator.

Thank you. We're going to get to that. Let's be clear here. Like, if we're doing an Olympics of predators, Clarence Thomas is up in the number one spot. Brett Kavanaugh is down in place three. You know, Thomas is is is a a much much more i don't know expansive predator yeah there was some belief at the time in this is sort of like every single article about this like talks about how this is peak b2 but it is sort of

important that like this it was a real possibility that he was going to go down in flames yeah it has happened before it can happen again and it was a real issue for him it was a real issue for him in large part because christine blasey ford who's a psychology professor just like testified under oath in one of the most like fucking harrowing things i've ever seen on on the floor of the senate horrific yeah the thing that stuck with me was it like he was laughing while he did it it's just like this guy is a fucking monster i mean one of the things that you do have to take into account is that like the media infrastructure that whirled up to defend brett kavanaugh to ensure that this

didn't take him down existed in part because about a third of right-wing media like about a third of that whole infrastructure system exists because of the clarence-wing media, like about a third of that whole infrastructure system exists because of the Clarence Thomas hearings. Yeah. Like that and Nixon's resignation being forced are kind of the two inciting incidents of modern conservative media. Those were the things that made them really commit

to the idea that like, we have to build a completely separate ecosystem of facts because if we let reality in at all like our guys who are all sex predators and criminals will never be able to win or stay in office yeah yeah and also i mean it's worth noting too that like roger ailes uh who is like one of the people responsible for building all this infrastructure was also himself just a serial predator on a like frankly incomprehensible scale yes and so all these people are also just defending themselves because they also are all fucking

their own sometimes miniature cavanel sometimes worse cavanels and it into this sort of breach right like so this is this is this is a real pr crisis the republicans this is this is going even worse for them than than the last time that they fucking did this, which was, as we alluded to, when they got Clarence Thomas on and when Joe Biden personally helped railroad Anita Hill to make sure that she would get fucked when she tried to testify against Clarence Thomas. So that's great. Incredible stuff. There was a point in our nation's history where that was actually like a political problem for Joe Biden. We're fucking no longer there anymore. And into this breach steps what's supposed to be an FBI investigation.

Yeah, ostensibly. Yeah. So I'm going to read from a recently released report. There's going to be I'm going to quote from this report a lot because this is this is the sort of new information that we have. Where can people see the report? It will be in the description. But if you just like search Sheldon Whitehouse report, you should be able to find it. There'll be a link in the notes.

Yeah, we'll link it. Yeah, it's like 30 pages. It's actually not 30 pages. It's more like 20 pages because like a bunch of the murder citations. So it's a pretty easy read. I'm going to read some of it. so it's a pretty easy read i'm going to read some of it and also i do want to point out the fact that the senate senate judiciary committee member who wrote this thing is named sheldon whitehouse incredible name incredible that is a great name where does that come from that can't be a real

name that can't be a name that existed that can't be a name that existed before the white house right like it has to have at some point been named after the White House, right? I mean, why else would you have that name? Well, it could just be that this family historically lived in a White House for 700 years. You'd have to be in a White House for a long ass time to get that last name. So here's from the report, quote, after hearing the testimony by Ford and Kavanaugh, the Judiciary committee agreed to request the fbi conduct a supplemental background investigation quote limited to current credible allegations against kavanaugh before the full senate voted on his confirmation and so there's an important detail here that wasn't clear to anyone at the time because fucking no one knows how the minutiae of fbi

investigations work but this was not actually a full fbi investigation this is this is something called a like supplemental background investigation and we'll get into what exactly that is in a second but it's it's not like a real fbi investigation and this investigation does what it was supposed to do which was you know clear cavanaugh's name enough republican senators to be able to vote for him without immediately getting destroyed politically what it didn't do was like actually conduct an investigation right trump very famously at this time it says that the investigation had quote free reign and it unbelievably did not bull fucking shit yeah he just lied about this like yep yeah the administration

directly ran the investigation killed it and then used its political power and the fbi itself to you know illegitimately railroad a serial predator around the supreme court to take away everyone's rights to get an abortion and then after that they stonewalled the investigation for six years so this is how that sort of process worked i'm going to quote from that report again third although the trump administration and the fbi assured the senate that the fbi's investigation was being conducted quote by the book they failed to disclose that there was actually no quote-unquote book at all the fbi produced no written record for supplemental background investigation saying it was merely acting as the, quote, agent for the White House in such matters.

But which White House? Was it Sheldon White? Sorry. No, unfortunately, White House bad. The one with the president. Oh, the bad White House. Yeah. By the way, I was I was trying to debunk his last name. He comes from the longest line of nepotism of people that held i was like i was like

oh they must have gotten named that back when like the fact that they had a house at all was noteworthy yeah these people have paint it literally kept going i was like okay one level okay two levels okay three levels okay four of us okay when does it end and then i got bored and the funny part about this again is that like this is the good guy in this story is this like nepo baby like infinite like corruption guy junior senator of rhode island yeah okay yeah and i i want to kind of focus in on on this statement in and of itself because this is just like an absolutely hideous a view of just like the hideous power of of the the unitary executive just do whatever the fuck it wants like what do you mean that the fbi

produced no written protocols for for how they're supposed to do supplemental background investigations what do you mean that they were quote acting as an agent for the white house like that's bat shit why do your security services literally directly answer to one guy who could just tell them to do whatever the fuck he wants? That's insane. That is a fucking, that is a deranged political system. And yet, this is,

you know, this is the system that's supposed to be doing this stuff. Which is also very funny because White House is, like, not really trying to get into a feud with the FBI. So there's a lot of kind of like a sculpatory stuff with the FBI, but like also everything the FBI does in this is such a fiasco that it's very clearly like also very much their fault.

I'm going to read another quote from this. This is from a bit later in the report. Fourth, the FBI's tip line was not used to facilitate the FBI supplemental background investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh. On instructions from the White House, the FBI did not investigate thousands of tips that came through the FBI's tip line. Instead, all tips related to Kavanaugh were forwarded to the White House without investigation. If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer fbi investigators away from derogatory or damaging information which is again absolutely

nuts insane and like yes so this is this is the kind of thing that like should be serious crime right like yeah that you go you get locked up for forever like this is a forever crime yeah it seems much more serious than, I don't know, robbing a bank to try and fund the Puerto Rican independence movement. Yeah, it's not clear to me whether this would have been a giant scandal for a normal administration

just because the American presidency has so much power, but it should have been. Like, this was just like a thing that would happen every week under Trump, was like, he would just do shit like this. Do you know also what you should do shit like? I don't know was not my best pivot no no but but do do shit like yeah like like these products and services that support the podcast

hey I'm Jacqueline Thomas the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand

what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German

and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters,

this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture

to deeper topics like identity, community and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, you look so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son

with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money?

I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. We've gotten to the point where, again, the FBI's tip line is not actually being used in the investigation. They're sending it all to the White House. The report where, again, the FBI's tip line is not actually being used in the investigation. They're sending it all to the White House. The report found that, so the FBI, like, and they talked about this publicly at the time, they talked to 10 people who they said had, like, direct knowledge of the situation.

But again, they only talked to 10 people. And there is a whole bunch of people who had very relevant evidence about a lot of important stuff in this. Like one of the one of the claims that's going on here is that kavanaugh was just wasted all the time and this is like every single person you talk to who knew kavanaugh in college and isn't like directly employed by the republican party was like oh yeah this guy was wasted all the time right and this became a big part of the trial and there were a whole bunch of people who tried to go to the fbi to be like hey he did this and they just like would not talk to them people who tried to come forward like they wouldn't talk to people who sent them information to the tip line they just like didn't talk to them at all i'm going to read from the thing again according to a quote executive summary of the fbi supplemental background investigation

issued by the judiciary committee majority the majority of that time was republican majority so that's why it's fucked these people were quote all witnesses with potential firsthand knowledge of the allegations the fbi did not however interview ford or kavanaugh the witnesses potentially with the most firsthand knowledge nor did it speak to other potentially corroborating witnesses who had not witnessed the events firsthand. Nevertheless, the Judiciary Committee's Republicans' executive summary concluded

that the, quote, supplemental background investigation confirms there was no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez. Oof. So, they didn't talk to either Kavanaugh or Ford, the two people who the thing was about well i mean you know why would you need to do that right like wait what the fuck this is so insane

the other part of this is so the fbi's initial background check didn't turn up any of this and so the supplemental thing is being done in place of like the normal background check because the normal background check was also done like shit so they never figured out any of this incredibly obvious stuff about him and meanwhile like the supplemental one they're just they just kept being like oh well we don't actually like need to talk to the people who this is about for incredibly nebulous reasons and the other part of this that's going on is that like while this process is happening the democrats on the on the judiciary committee are trying to figure out how this process works and trump just like refuses to talk to any of them and the fbi refuses to fucking send any of them people are fighting out like we we know that

there's no specific process for this like supplemental investigation thing um because like their staffers found it out from a youtube video jesus. Like they did not find this out from the FBI. It was like this guy said it or staffers were like watching YouTube videos to figure out how this investigation was supposed to work. So and it turns out we had known at the time that the FBI was doing some kind of shady stuff. But what we know now is that so Ford and her lawyers repeatedly tried to talk to the fbi and they were just never able to do so right the fbi completely stonewalled them and it turns out that they stonewalled them because trump specifically ordered the fbi not to talk to her or kavanaugh what what which is absolutely insane yeah i love the law it turns out and this is this is the part of this is the

most insane right everyone thought that the FBI was doing a normal FBI investigation. Right. And part of what's going on here is that the media is just these like absolute credulous idiots. Right. Because every single day the media is reporting that like Trump is allowing an open investigation because like somehow, again, this is this is like two years into him being in office. Right. None of these people have figured out that every single thing he says is a lie. They're all like, oh, yeah, Trump keeps saying that these people can talk to whoever they want and they can investigate whoever they want. And this gets to the point where the FBI is calling the White House every day because they'll be reading the news reports that say we can talk to anyone. And they'll be like, hey, you told us we can't talk to these people. And they'll be like, no, no, actually, you still can't talk to these people.

And it turns out that what's happening is this like, quote unquote, supplemental investigation. It's not an FBI investigation. They can only do things that are like, quote unquote, directed by the president. So they can only talk to the people who the president tells them to talk to. And they can't look at evidence that the president doesn't tell them to look at. And so what ends up happening is that like you know there's initially like four people that that they're that they're supposed to be talking to right and you know they keep getting these like press things that are like oh hey this is a full this is an open investigation you can

like do whatever you want and eventually they they put in like six more people so like they talk to 10 total people but because this is an investigation that is not being run by the fbi really it's being it's being directly ran by trump himself which he's lying about because of that they fucking never talked to anyone and then also again as we talked about right that that tip line they set up a bunch of people who tried to talk to the fbi who the fbi wouldn't talk to were like told okay go submit stuff to this tip line and the fbi later admits that the tip line was like never real sure have a nice fake tip line yeah they never used any of the investigation they sent it all to trump yeah and the reason they did it was that they were sick of people calling their regular tip

line so they set up a specific tip line so they could just have all the stuff they would never listen to and send it to the white house so they could do i guess like oppo research bullshit on it so this is just straight up a sham. There's no actual investigation going on. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves

seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear

to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment

with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture

to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money?

I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're gonna get 15% every single year,

but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever we did no research. We talked to like 10 people and we didn't like ask them anything and we didn't use any of the research that we had. And we have cleared this guy as this is happening. Right. The Judiciary Committee Democrats are like trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. And this begins a six-year process of Senator Whitehouse just fighting a war with the actual Whitehouse and the FBI and the DOJ to try to figure out what the fuck just happened.

And the interesting part of this also is that, so obviously the Trump administration was never going to talk to them, right? Which is in and of itself incredibly disturbing that the Senate Judiciary Committee, who in theory is one of the organizations that's supposed to be doing oversight of the FBI, would send requests to the FBI for information. The FBI would just tell them to fuck off. Yeah. But the interesting part is they kept doing this under Biden. So Biden's FBI was also doing this. I love the degree to which fucking liberals have

concluded, politically at least, that they have to be as vociferously pro-law enforcement as they can. And all cops ever do is say, we are just waiting for the chance to kill you like that. Yeah, it's great. Cool. Good stuff. I'm going to read a line from this. It's so insane. When the senators followed up, they faced the challenge of aligning FBI, DOJ and White House equities. So they sent like requests for the emails between Trump and the FBI, right, to figure out whether Trump was doing the thing he was doing,

which was like directly running the investigation himself. The FBI claimed it could not answer without authorization from the DOJ and the White House. The DOJ directed the senators' inquiries to the White House and the FBI, and the White House referred the senators back to the agencies. So they're doing this, like they're like the circular road around thing you get from your insurance company where they tell you to talk to three people and every single one of them tells you to talk to the other one but but again this is the biden doj the biden fbi and the biden administration all doing this the fbi finally provides documents about like their contact with trump for the investigation they finally provide the documents in november of

2023 this investigation started in late 2018 it took half a decade almost half of which was under the biden administration and also senator whitehouse literally threatening to torpedo a nomination for the doj's office of legal counsel like he had to threaten the department of justice in order to get them to send the documents that proved that trump colluded to stop the kavanaugh investigation which even just from like a political standpoint from the democrats right why the fuck would you not want that in the open i mean i guess i guess unless you're joe biden you don't want everyone remembering like all the shit you need to need a hill but like this is literally free political ammunition of your opponent like abusing the political process and it still took a democratic senator just

directly threatening the doj of a democratic administration to get this out i just like it also took so many years like yeah kavanaugh has has been able to take away and fuck up our rights since what? Twenty eighteen. Twenty nineteen. Yeah. And the damage he's done is permanent. Yeah. He will be around in office, possibly very likely for most of the rest of our lives.

Yeah. Like I said earlier, he's only 59 years old yeah he could have another 30 years there at least yeah and if this stuff had been known she absolutely would not have gotten nominated right there there were two unbelievably close votes to get him appointed right there was a first vote where the republicans straight up bypassed the filibuster and still almost lost and it turns out that okay the actual final vote ended up being 50 to 48 with two abstentions and one of the abstentions was because this guy was going to his daughter's wedding or something but the other abstention was lisa marowski who's the

the senator from alaska who's like the most sort of liberal of the republican senators and she does like a coward present vote so it can happen. And if she had voted no, and if Joe Manchin hadn't fucking crossed party lines to get, to get him in office, which I think also people just forget about Joe Manchin, that he, he is also like individually,

specifically the guy who got fucking Kavanaugh appointed, this would have failed. And the only reason that it didn't fail and that this guy was able to fucking destroy Roe v. Wade is that Trump just straight up ran a fake FBI investigation and lied to everyone about it and fucking railroaded the nomination through. That's fucking Kavanaugh. And I think I think I think the close on here again is like every single week of Trump is just like this. Yeah.

Right. Like every single day has some bullshit like this. I just like fucks everyone for the rest of their lives. Yep. And it's deeply grim that he could take power again and we could get back to like the stuff he was doing at the end of his administration. He was just like having protesters killed with federal marshals. Like, yeah, that's the scary thing about it right is there's not any kind of like functional resistance to this right the left has no power has no major serious organizing capacity in the united states and can't

get on the same page about anything that matters whereas liberals when they have four years of control of the federal government cannot adequately prosecute an attempt to overthrow the government and murder them yeah so i i don't know uh you know make sure you got clean water folks check on that garden i don't know what to tell you it's just so bleak because like i said earlier everything is so permanent yeah you know what i mean it just lasts so fucking long yeah it lasts so long and like and like we we don't even know the damage that kavanaugh is going to do to our society because of trump and it's also just terrifying that you know trump was able to manipulate the system in this way and that so many people were silenced and now our rights are gone yeah or our rights are going to be taken away

we have no idea what else is going to be taken yep we have no idea what else is going to get fucked up we have it we have ideas ideas that, the problem is that, the root of the problem is that liberals work tirelessly in this country to stop the left from gaining any power, and the left works tirelessly to stop itself from having any kind of influence by having no capacity to organize or compromise with people who do not agree

with whatever their little brand of leftism is, right? Whereas conservatives are willing to work together with other conservatives they hate for 40 straight years in order to get us to the position that we're in. That's what happened, is they had message discipline, they had organizing discipline, and they successfully pushed their madness into the mainstream in such a way that now the democratic party in a lot of ways is expending a huge amount of its efforts on moving in the direction of that madness especially as regards immigration look at where we've moved on immigration from 2016 to 2024 right yeah that is the result of disciplined power building as opposed to you know what liberals and the left do which is fight with

each other and fight amongst each other and engage in a mix of like craven power politics and worshiping various con artists and the right worships con artists too they just actually get power out of the deal yeah and and just like this the other terrifying thing about this story is that it's not fucking everywhere it's not everywhere 10 years ago this would be the scandal of all scandals and it's barely barely a headline no because no one's going to do anything about it it's like it's like elon musk paying people a million dollars a day to vote in pennsylvania like yeah that should be illegal like you can you people a million dollars a day to vote in Pennsylvania. Like, yeah, that should be illegal. Like you can you can at least make a strong case based on existing laws that that is election interference, the kind of which that can land you in prison.

Everyone knows nothing's going to happen to him. Yeah, that's going to happen to him if Kamala wins. Right. If the Dems have a blowout and wind up with both houses of Congress, nothing is going to happen to Elon Musk. have a blowout and wind up with both houses of Congress, nothing is going to happen to Elon Musk. It's, yeah. Again, just like we have no idea how long this is going

to go on and how much worse it could get. Yeah. I have some ideas, but I podcasted about those back in 2019, Sophie. I was there. I was quite literally there. But yeah, but yeah so thanks mia that was a bummer thank you mia no this was good i uh this is solid and a bummer again when i started this by saying

my last second to the last conversation i had in person with my mom was about kavanaugh it was her almost screaming at me because of how unfair what the Democrats did to Brett Kavanaugh was because of the good man that they and she felt the same way about Clarence Thomas, right? That like these guys were the victims of media assassination attempts. She felt the same way about Bill Cosby, by the way. Anyway, whatever. I don't need to yell about my mom. I've yelled about enough this episode. Tomorrow's episode will be more fun. I promise we're gonna we're gonna yell about why the econ double prize is fake and read some of the dumbest things you've ever seen in your life. Hell yeah. There we go.

There we go. Back to the good stuff. Back to the good stuff. Yeah. Mia has been deeply excited to do this episode. So look out for that one. And I don't know. Touch grass and pet a dog if it wants you to.

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It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories,

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