It’s obvious to anyone that if you don’t want someone to discover something, you make it as hard to find as possible. With the process of letting Senators see the FBI report on Brett Kavanaugh, McConnell definitely doesn’t want anyone to find anything.
Via NBC
What will be delivered, according to aides and senators, are the "302" forms of the FBI interviews, which summarize the contents of the interviews. The FBI, which has spent only a few days on the investigation, will not be submitting a conclusion as to who's telling the truth in the case.
All 100 Senators will have access to the new information, but not their staffs. There also are 10 Judiciary Committee staffers who have access to the secret Kavanaugh file, which is a paper report — there are no pdf's or emails of it. And it will not be made public.
On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, will be the first to see the Kavanaugh file at 8:00 a.m. and then ranking Democratic member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., can read the file at 9:00 a.m., sources briefed on the schedule told NBC News. Following that, the rest of the GOP members on the Judiciary Committee go at 10:00 a.m. and the Democrats on the panel can view the report at 11:00 a.m.
After looking at this procedure, my opinion is that McConnell’s plan is to cast doubt on what the report actually says and turn it into a he said/she said debate with the media drawing different conclusions from each side of the aisle. With nobody allowed to get another copy of the report or even take any notes out of the room, nobody can state definitively what the report actually says with proof.
A senator can only look at the report for 1 hour. With no conclusion being given by the FBI, both sides will only be giving their opinions. After his one hour is up, you can guarantee Grassley is going to claim the investigation didn’t prove Kavanaugh did anything wrong. If Feinstein is smart, she’ll focus on going over the summary of Mark Judge’s interview due to him being the only other person in the room during Dr. Ford’s sexual assault.
The next part is critical because it’s likely how McConnell wants to get Jeff Flake into voting for Kavanaugh. By having the 10 other GOP committee members in the room with Flake for an hour, he wants all of them to coerce Flake into voting for Kavanaugh and lay out a bunch of strong arguments for the nomination. Remember that the Democrats managed to get the investigation going because Flake was in another room with Chris Coons and other Democrats for around 30 minutes to an hour with no Republican Senators to dissuade him. Mitch wants to isolate Flake from Coons and get rid of any doubts Flake has about Brett Kavanaugh.
With the GOP Judiciary committee done with their turn, they’ll leave the room and Dems go in. But the GOP will have a press conference telling every reporter that the FBI investigation turned up nothing damaging with their Dem counterparts locked in so they can’t get a rebuttal for another hour which is enough time to get a bunch of headlines going on all of the Right Wing websites claiming that the investigation proved that Kavanaugh did nothing wrong.
Some people here think the investigation didn’t turn up anything useful. But I don’t see why McConnell would put so much effort into keeping it secret if he knew there wasn’t anything damaging in it?