Senator Sheldon Whitehouse released his report that outlines how The Felon Guy’s administration did not allow the FBI to conduct a full-scale investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh that threatened his Supreme Court confirmation, according to a new report, disputing then-President Donald Trump’s public claims at the time.
The report, released Tuesday by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., six years after he launched a Senate inquiry, says that the Trump administration “exercised total control over the scope of the investigation” and prevented the FBI from interviewing certain witnesses and following leads. As a result, the probe into the allegations against Kavanaugh was “flawed and incomplete” and “unworthy of reliance by the Senate,” the report says.
The Senate report is a damning rebuke to the Trump administration’s insistence that it gave the FBI “free rein” to conduct the investigation into the allegations. Trump said at the time that he wanted the agency “to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion.” The findings corroborate reporting over the years that Trump officials worked to hamstring the investigation.
Key Facts
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts, released the final report Tuesday covering Democrats’ yearslong investigation into how the FBI handled its investigation into the claims against Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh’s 2018 hearing was derailed when Christine Blasey Ford went public with allegations the now-justice had sexually assaulted her in 1982, with Deborah Ramirez also later alleging Kavanaugh had separately exposed himself to her when they were at Yale University (he has denied all allegations).
The FBI conducted an investigation into those allegations, with then-President Donald Trump publicly claiming at the time the FBI had “free rein” to take whatever steps necessary and interview whomever they wanted.
In actuality, the report claims the FBI was constrained by federal rules to only investigate what Trump’s White House directed them to, which was pretty limited in scope, only allowing investigators to interview 10 witnesses—which didn’t include Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford—even as other people came forward saying they had corroborating evidence.
The Trump administration also said it established a tip line for the Kavanaugh investigation, but Whitehouse said those tips were never reviewed or investigated further—which the report alleges was “at the White House’s direction”—and it wasn’t even a separate tip line, just the same tip line used to handle other public comments to the FBI.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Forbes the report is “yet another attempt to delegitimize the Supreme Court” and claimed Kavanaugh “was unfairly slandered and smeared with lies in a Democrat-led hoax to derail his appointment,” and the Supreme Court has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Some Great ‘Splaining Below:
The four key findings of Whitehouse’s years-long investigation into this episode are:
- The supplemental background investigation was completely controlled by the Trump White House. The FBI was never given “free rein” to conduct a thorough, complete investigation. Statements to the contrary from former President Trump and White House and Department of Justice officials were false.
- Trump White House and FBI assertions that the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation was conducted “by the book” according to standard FBI procedures were false and misleading, failing to disclose that there are no standard procedures for supplemental background investigations. Instead, FBI practice, which the Trump Administration never disclosed, requires step-by-step instructions from the White House. This practice may be appropriate for handling many routine, minor questions that can arise after an initial background investigation, but it was uniquely inappropriate for investigating the serious, high-profile allegations against Kavanaugh.
- The investigation was directed by the Trump White House to pursue only first-hand evidence and not corroborating evidence. Senate Republicans then cited the absence of corroborating evidence to justify confirming Kavanaugh.
- The FBI’s public “tip line” investigation was a fake. No tip was ever investigated; Kavanaugh-related tips were delivered straight to the Trump White House without FBI investigation. Indeed, the Trump White House could have used tip line information to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory evidence
