A group representing 90 young women — including U.S. Olympic team gymnasts Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman — filed federal tort claims against the FBI on Wednesday, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for the bureau’s mishandling of its investigation into sexual abuse by former U.S. Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar.
The majority of the claimants say Nassar abused them after his abuse was reported to the FBI in 2015, during a yearlong period in which no meaningful investigative action was taken and Nassar continued to sexually abuse young women and children. Many are athletes who were associated with the USA Gymnastics program or with Michigan State University, where Nassar maintained a clinic.
The Justice Department announced just before the Memorial Day weekend that the individual FBI agents whom the inspector general identified as responsible for the failure of the investigation — and for subsequent attempts to mislead investigators for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General — would not face charges.
That in itself caused considerable outrage on Capitol Hill. The inspector general that first probed the FBI’s response to allegations of sexual abuse by Nassar concluded not just that the investigators bungled the probe but that they then lied about their actions to investigators. That it itself is a criminal offense, which raised questions about why the DoJ declined to pursue the matter further:
The Justice Department’s Criminal Division initiated a new review of the agents in October, just months after the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found the pair had failed to address claims by gymnasts that Nassar had sexually abused them “with the urgency that the allegations required.”
The report further suggested that the two agents lied to investigators to “make it appear that they had been diligent in responding to the sexual abuse allegations.” …
“This decision is infuriating. FBI agents who knew of Larry Nassar’s abuse, did nothing, and then lied about it will face no legal consequences for their actions,” Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said in a joint statement.
“Our frustrations are compounded by the fact that the Department has provided no public explanation for this decision,” they added. “As we have noted before, the Justice Manual authorizes a case-closing letter explaining the Department’s decision-making in similar situations, especially where law enforcement officers are accused of misconduct or criminal behavior. This case certainly qualifies for such treatment.”
Put simply, this decision is a disgrace. It smacks of a continuing cover-up in the DoJ in the Nassar case, or at the very least a desire to prevent accountability for failures. One has to wonder whether the fact that this failure took place under the Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch-era FBI — and the James Comey FBI, for that matter — has something to do with the Merrick Garland-Joe Biden era DoJ’s reluctance to hold people accountable for it.
If Biles et al can’t get accountability through the DoJ, they naturally want to turn to the judiciary for satisfaction. But will it work? The statute under which this lawsuit will proceed may...
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2 comments:
Bungled?
I'd bet cold hard cash that the cover up has something to do with some politician(s) that have connections to the case. Likely along the same lines as to why none of Madame Maxwell's client lists have been released.
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