The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s vetting of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s highly controversial nominee to head the U.S. Department of Defense, an $842 billion entity that employs more than 2.8 million people, was “insufficient,” Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee warned at the start of his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

The FBI’s report on Hegseth was made available only to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee, not the rank-and-file Senators on the Committee. Ranking Member Reed asked that the report be made available to the entire committee, but the Republican Chairman, Roger Wicker, refused.

Critics have noted that, similarly to how the FBI conducted its investigation into sexual harassment allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Bureau reportedly did not interview the person who allegedly was sexually abused. In October 2018, as ABC News reported, the FBI did not interview Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

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ABC News also, on Tuesday, reported the FBI did not interview the woman, whose name has not been made public, who “told investigators in October 2017 that she had encountered Hegseth at an event afterparty at a California hotel where both had been drinking and claimed that he sexually assaulted her.”

The New York Times on Tuesday published a report detailing concerns Democrats have voiced about Hegseth and the FBI’s report.

“Quite a few of the women with significant allegations against him have not been interviewed by the F.B.I. investigators,” Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) said on MSNBC on Monday evening, The Times reported, “adding that some of those women feared for their safety and that of their children.”

“My understanding is that some of them would like to be contacted by the F.B.I. investigative team, or the vetters, and they have not been talked to,” Duckworth also told MSNBC.

“One missed opportunity,” The Times reported, “came when the bureau did not interview one of Mr. Hegseth’s ex-wives before its findings were presented to senators last week, according to people familiar with the bureau’s investigation.”

Another Democratic Senator on the Armed Services Committee, Richard Blumenthal, told The Times: “There are significant gaps and inadequacies in the report, including the failure to interview some of the key potential witnesses with personal knowledge of improprieties or abuse.”

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Tuesday morning, Ranking Member Reed told Republican Chairman Wicker: “You and I have both seen the FBI background investigation, as they have said, and I want to say, to the record, I believe the investigation was insufficient.”

“Frankly, there are still FBI obligations to talk to people, they have not had access to the forensic audit, which I referenced, and the person who had access to was quite critical of Mr. Hegseth, and I think people on both sides have suggested that they get the report.”

“I know your colleagues have asked for it, [Senate Republican Majority Leader] Thune assured me personally that he thought it was the appropriate idea.”

Reed noted that another of Trump’s nominees, “had similar, very complicated personal issues,” and the “report was made available for all the members.”

Chairman Wicker refused Ranking Member Reed’s request.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Reed went on to tell Hegseth, “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Wicker shuts down Reed’s request to make the Pete Hegseth FBI report available to all members pic.twitter.com/r9YiGQSyoF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 14, 2025

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Image via Reuters

Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who served as vice chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, on Tuesday cited the Special Counsel’s just-released, 174-page report on Donald Trump’s involvement with the January 6 insurrection, and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, to deliver a prescient warning to members of the Senate. Starting today, the Senate begins confirmation hearings on the President-elect’s highly-controversial cabinet nominees. Focusing on Justice Department nominees, she warned Senators that those “compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant” should not be confirmed.

Jack Smith, who resigned as Special Counsel on Friday ahead of the President-elect’s inauguration next week, emphasized in his report that there was sufficient evidence to warrant prosecuting Donald Trump. He also noted that if those cases had proceeded to a jury trial, the evidence was strong enough to secure convictions.

Smith wrote, “after conducting thorough investigations, I found that, with respect to both Mr. Trump’s unprecedented efforts to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election and his unlawful retention of classified documents after leaving office, the [Principles of Federal Prosecution] compelled prosecution.”

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His final words in his report state that the Special Counsel’s office “assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

Cheney says that Smith’s report makes clear that Trump’s nominees, specifically, Justice Department nominees, had anything to do with his efforts to overturn the election, they must not be confirmed by the Senate: “if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic.”

“The Special Counsel’s 1/6 Report,” her statement begins, “made public last night, confirms the unavoidable facts of 1/6 yet again. DOJ’s exhaustive and independent investigation reached the same essential conclusions as the Select Committee. All this DOJ evidence must be preserved.”

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“But most important now, as the Senate considers confirming Trump’s Justice Department nominees: if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic. As our framers knew, our institutions only hold when those in office are not compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant.”

“So this question is now paramount for Republicans: Will you faithfully perform the duties the framers assigned to you and do what the Constitution requires? Or do you lack the courage?”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican and the publisher of The Bulwark, responded, writing: “This. Donald Trump has revealed how shallow the vast majority of the current GOP’s commitment is to the constitution and the American experiment. These confirmation hearings will be another inflection point for the few who claim they value their oath. I hope some rise to the occasion.”

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Image via Reuters

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a six-term Democratic former U.S. Representative, is being branded a “solid communist” and a “communist sympathizer” by a Fox News host whose husband is a Trump cabinet nominee. The attack comes as the city deals with the massive wildfires that have killed 24 people and caused tremendous and historic damage to over 60 square miles of California. More than 12,000 structures reportedly have been destroyed and 92,000 people are under evacuation orders.

Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy is married to former Fox News host and Republican former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, President-elect Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary nominee. She has a history of throwing around the divisive “communist” label. On Monday, she joined the pile-on of attacks against the L.A. mayor.

“You know, listen, a lot of people have been talking about, you know, who’s to blame, you know, whether it’s [Governor] Gavin Newsom or the mayor,” Campos-Duffy told the right-wing channel’s viewers in what appeared to be prepared remarks. “A lot of people don’t realize that Karen Bass is actually, you know, we talk about these left wing, left wing policies.”

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“She has ties to communism —she was cutting sugar cane in Cuba, um, she’s had 15 trips to Cuba, met with Fidel Castro,” Campos Duffy continued. “She is a solid communist, so don’t be surprised that your policies make your city, um, look like this when you, when you put a communist, somebody, a communist and a communist sympathizer at the top of your um of the heap as the mayor of Los Angeles, it’s uh, not surprising. Um, they manage things— look at how Cuba’s managed and now look at this.”

Campos-Duffy, a devout MAGA supporter and longtime Trump defender, earlier this month called January 6 rioters “political dissidents,” a term traditionally reserved for individuals persecuted for opposing authoritarian or oppressive governmental authority or policies.

Bass has indeed has traveled to Cuba, according to multiple reports, and “spent part of the 1970s working construction in Fidel Castro’s Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, a group that has organized annual trips to Cuba for young, leftist Americans for half a century,” The Atlantic reported in 2020.

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That was five decades ago, work that began when Bass was 19 and doing volunteer work.

“The best way to think of Bass’s politics at the time—and now—is ‘as a Black activist who was deeply concerned about what the activists are raising today: systemic racism,'” Bass told Edward-Isaac Dovere, when he wrote for The Atlantic. She added: “I was also deeply concerned on the international front about issues like apartheid in South Africa and supporting the independence movements in Africa. And a lot of times that did not align with U.S. policy.”

Bass has said point-blank she is not a communist.

“I’m not a socialist. I’m not a communist,” Bass told NBC News in 2020. “I’ve belonged to one party my entire life and that’s the Democratic Party, and I’m a Christian.”

Political commentator Keith Olbermann declared he hopes Mayor Bass sues Campos-Duffy “into the ground.”

Watch the video clip below or at this link.

Rachel Campos Duffy on Los Angeles Fires: People don’t realize that Karen Bass.. She has ties to communism. She was cutting sugar cane in Cuba.. She’s a solid communist. Don’t be surprised your policies make your city look like this when you put a communist sympathizer.. pic.twitter.com/YbLyYEpzDd

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 13, 2025

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license