For people who have it so hard called in the FBI The Republicans are certainly quick to target Donald Trump To the FBI if they need a cover-up, er, background check to save a troubled Trump for high office.
In October 2018, Brett M. Kavanaugh was the beneficiary. Then-President Trump and a Republican majority in the Senate ordered the FBI to investigate sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee to appease Republican senators whose threatened opposition could derail his nomination.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes takes a critical look at the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
But as I learned while researching a book at the time, the Trump White House told the FBI who its agents could contact, ignored willing witnesses with damning information, and gave them just days to finish. The office's sloppy Kavanaugh report, which merely summarized interviews with agents without drawing conclusions, was enough political cover for Trump and Senate Republicans to falsely claim he had been exonerated. The Democrats were right to insist otherwise. Nevertheless, it was their word against that of the Republicans, as the report, which is only available to senators, remains secret to this day.
And Kavanaugh, comfortably settled in his lifelong seat on the highest court in the land, coordinated last Thursday – fortunately on the losing side – to block Trump's conviction for covering up hush money payments to a porn star.
Trump isn't even back in the White House yet, and he's already played the FBI card – let's call it the Trump card – again, and again apparently with success, this time because of his clearly unsuitable choice for Secretary of Defense, the former Fox News host and former National Guard officer Pete Hegseth. With yet another incomplete, half-baked and secret FBI background check tied to alleged sexual assault and excessive drinking, Hegseth survived his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday without a dissenting vote from the Armed Services Committee's Republican majority.
This Hegseth, once known as a dead candidate leavesIt's a shame for the Senate that it now looks likely to be confirmed. In 1989, he was aroused by Texas Republican Rep. John Tower's reputation for women and drinking rejected as President George H. W. Bush's nominee for Defense Department, and Tower was one of his fellow senators. In the Trump era, however, Republican senators would rather abandon their constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on presidential nominations than stand up to the vengeful Trump. But few are fooled: Many, if not most, Republicans know that Hegseth has no place at the helm of the Pentagon, with its nearly 3 million employees and an annual budget of $900 billion.
As for Trump, the Hegseth episode, just days before his inauguration on Monday, is evidence that the returning president will once again abuse his power over government departments, probably more than in his first term.
After all, the 6-3 right-wing Supreme Court supermajority he built has since given Trump and future presidents immunity for crimes committed under the guise of official action. And unlike his first term, Trump is hiring proven sycophants.
Just compare Hegseth to Trump's first defense secretary, James N. Mattis, a four-star Marine general, commander in the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq, and a senior Pentagon official outside of combat. Mattis held out two years earlier resign in protest of principle about Trump's erratic military decisions. It's safe to assume that early in his first term – before his total subjugation of the Republican Party – Trump didn't choose someone as flawed and flawed as Hegseth for fear of bipartisan rejection.
One more lesson from this sad story (though I don't hope to learn from it): It's high time to stop the farce of mandating FBI background checks that aren't and presenting them as a seal of approval for undeserving presidential elections.
First, Team Trump against it The FBI is investigating the president-elect's controversial Cabinet decisions. But the Mar-a-Lago Mafia later reconsidered Media reports Hegseth's alleged sexual misconduct, repeated public drunkenness, and financial mismanagement of two small veterans groups appeared to do so anything but ruin his chances of confirmation. In December, Trump's transition team commissioned The FBI commissions Hegseth to “investigate.”
All parties followed Kavanaugh's investigative playbook: The Trump team, as a client of the FBI, told the agency who to question. The office ignored othersaid Democrats briefed by people with access to the report. For example: the woman with whom Hegseth reached a financial settlement in 2020 over an alleged rape in Monterey, California in 2017 (which Hegseth denied); the second of Hegseth's three wives, who tried in vain to speak to agents after a superficial contact; whistleblowers at the veterans groups from which Hegseth was expelled; and Fox News employees who reported his drinking at work just months ago.
Still, Trump and his Republican allies were pleased, including Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a veteran and sexual assault survivor who was reportedly assassinated along with other initial Hegseth critics punitive pressure campaign from Trump allies.
And the report remains secret, more secret than the one on Kavanaugh, which all senators were able to read. The Hegseth results just went the Republican chairman and senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, as Team Trump dictated. Democratic Committee Member, Senator Elizabeth Warren protested on CNN: “Show us. If there is no negative information, they should be ready to frame it and hang it on the wall.”
Exactly.
During his hearing, Hegseth's false mantra on all the allegations against him was: “anonymous smears” – many were not anonymous – although he implicitly acknowledged their truth by repeatedly insisting that it was a “redemption story.” As Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, noted: “It can't be both.” Kelly added, “You know the truth would disqualify you from the job.”
The committee is expected to approve Hegseth's nomination as early as Monday and send it to the full Senate. Expect him to be confirmed on a party-line vote, including by senators who will approvingly cite an FBI background check they haven't even read.