SENATORS, MAKE SOME NOISE ABOUT THIS

NBC News reports that the FBI investigation of sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh will be a sham:

The White House is limiting the scope of the FBI’s investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, multiple people briefed on the matter told NBC News.

While the FBI will examine the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, the bureau has not been permitted to investigate the claims of Julie Swetnick, who has accused Kavanaugh of engaging in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s, those people familiar with the investigation told NBC News. A White House official confirmed that Swetnick's claims will not be pursued as part of the reopened background investigation into Kavanaugh.

... the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview, according to several people who discussed the parameters on the condition of anonymity.

... Investigators plan to meet with Mark Judge, a high school classmate and friend of Kavanaugh's whom Ford named as a witness and participant to her alleged assault.

But as of now, the FBI cannot ask the supermarket that employed Judge for records verifying when he was employed there, one of the sources was told. Ford said in congressional testimony Thursday that those records would help her narrow the time frame of the alleged incident which she recalls happening some time in the summer of 1982 in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Two sources familiar with the investigation said the FBI will also not be able to examine why Kavanaugh’s account of his drinking at Yale University differs from those of some former classmates, who have said he was known as a heavy drinker.

The plan after that is presumably to mock liberals for complaining that the investigation didn't uncover evidence pointing to Kavanaugh's guilt. This will be every right-wing pundit as soon as the investigation is concluded:

Tweets from Dems one week from now:

THE FBI IS COMPROMISED

MEN RAN THE INVESTIGATION

ONE WEEK IS TOO SHORT

WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER ALLEGATIONS

I DON’T CARE THAT THE FBI FOUND NOTHING, I BELIEVE ALL WOMEN

There’s NO satisfactory conclusion for Dems other than a Dem SCOTUS.

— Matt’s Idea Shop (@MattsIdeaShop) September 29, 2018

Dr. Blasey Ford's recollection of seeing Mark Judge working in a supermarket shortly after the assault is borne out by Judge's book Wasted, as Philip Bump noted on Thursday:

In one passage, beginning on Page 92, Judge describes his time working at a grocery store in the context of his drinking problem. Emphasis added.

It was the summer before senior year, and by now, even though I wasn’t drinking every day, I was completely hooked. Going a week without getting drunk was unthinkable. I was spending between four and seven nights with the gang, either at a party or at O’Rourke’s....

Of course, alcoholics also get into all kinds of trouble because of their drinking. When they supersede their own tolerance, they suffer catastrophic hangovers. These can make getting through the day an Olympic event. This was never more evident to me than when, to raise money for football camp, I spent a few weeks working as a bag boy at the local supermarket.

My job was simple. People would leave their grocery baskets against a rail in front of the store, then pull their cars around. I would then sling their groceries in the car, sometimes get a small tip, and then wait for the next car.

It was a nightmare. Invariably I would be hungover — or still drunk — when I got to work at seven in the morning, and I spent most of the first hour just trying to hold myself together.

Judge graduated from high school in 1983. The summer before his senior year, then, would be the summer of 1982.

We know when that football camp occurred because Kavanaugh, in an effort to demonstrate that he hadn’t been at any such party as described by Ford, released his personal calendar from that summer.

... Football camp started Aug. 22, 1982. Judge worked for a grocery store for several weeks before that camp, meaning that he probably worked there for a period in late July to mid-August.

Or will Judge say that he took dramatic license in his book and that's not the case, at which point the FBI will be powerless to check the store's records?

The supposedly heroic Jeff Flake could be really heroic by threatening a no vote on Kavanaugh unless these restrictions are lifted. But he won't do that. So Democratic senators need to raise hell right now. It has to become widely known at the outset that this is a sham investigation. Otherwise, people who aren't politics junkies -- i.e., the majority of Americans -- will believe that the investigation is on the up-and-up and will assume that Democrats are sour-grapes whiners when they question the inevitable favorable-to-Kavanaugh outcome. And there's an outside chance that raising hell will pressure the White House to lift some of the restrictions.