Investigation that didn’t investigate anything doesn’t find what it wasn’t looking for

The five-day sham is over:

The White House 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, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Corroboration” is a Republican term of art that means “a level of evidence that would have convinced the O.J. Simpson jury to convict him.”

That standard was always going to be impossible to meet anyway, but just to be absolutely sure, the White House ordered the FBI not to talk to anybody who might have more damaging information about St. Kavanaugh of the Perjured Miracles:

According to the Washington Post, FBI agents only spoke to six people as a part of the investigation. Five of them were connected to Dr. Ford and her story of a 1982 sexual assault at the hands of Kavanaugh. Somehow, neither Kavanaugh, nor Ford, were among those interviewed.

Instead, the bureau interviewed three people who Ford said attended the party: Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth and Leland Keyser. The FBI also talked to two other friends of Kavanaugh’s who were listed as attending a gathering during the same summer that Ford alleged she was assaulted: Chris Garrett, who went out with Ford for a time, and Tim Gaudette.

The FBI has only briefly looked into the other allegations against Kavanaugh. While an interview was conducted with Deborah Ramirez, who said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale, investigators did not, as far as Ramirez’s legal team knew, speak to any of the 20 people she said may be able to corroborate her story. Julie Swetnick, who implicated Kavanaugh in a pattern of sexual assaults, was also not interviewed.

The failure to talk to any of the many people who Ramirez said could corroborate her story is a particularly egregious giveaway.  This investigation had all the integrity of Donald Trump’s “business empire,” or his “university,” or his “marriages.”  Give the man this (and nothing else): he knows how to scam the rubes.

This isn’t to say that the fight to stop Kavanaugh is over.  McConnell has scheduled a cloture vote for tomorrow, not because he’s certain he has the votes, but because he realizes that it’s now or never for this farcical disgrace of nominee that he was handed by the moron in chief.  At this rate, if Kavanaugh goes down there will barely be enough time to do yet another quarter-assed vetting process, in order to get the next Federalist Society darling into the chute before the election, while an actual confirmation vote will have to wait for the lame duck session.

So the fact that McConnell is pressing forward with a vote tells us nothing in and of itself.  And perhaps the sham nature of this investigation will by itself inspire more people to come forward before Saturday, which is the earliest date on which a floor vote could be held, per the Senate’s rules, assuming they are followed.

In short it all probably comes down to whether two of Flake, Murkowski, and Collins decide to vote no. (I can’t see any Democrat going along with being the decisive vote in these circumstances.).  For what it’s worth, I think at the moment the odds favor confirmation, but far from overwhelmingly.  And given what’s happened over the past three weeks, Saturday is still a ways away.