The Trump administration did not allow the FBI to conduct a major investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh that threatened his confirmation by the Supreme Court, according to a new report detailing then-President Donald’s public claims Trump at the time were disputed.
The report, released Tuesday by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., six years after he launched a Senate investigation, says the Trump administration exercised “complete control over the scope of the investigation” and the FBI prevented certain witnesses from to interview and following directions. As a result, the investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh was “flawed and incomplete” and “unworthy of Senate trust,” the report said.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court in 2018 was in jeopardy due to allegations of sexual misconduct by Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, which he denied. The FBI launched an additional investigation into the claims after Kavanaugh and Ford testified separately before the Senate Judiciary Committee and ahead of the Senate vote on his confirmation.
The FBI concluded at the time that there was “no corroboration of Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez.” (Swetnick’s claim was not included in the study.) Kavanaugh was ultimately narrowly confirmed by the Supreme Court.
The Senate report is a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s insistence that it gave the FBI “free rein” to conduct the impeachment investigation. Trump said at the time that he wanted the agency to “interview anyone they deem appropriate, in their sole discretion.” The findings confirm reporting over the years that Trump officials worked to obstruct the investigation.
According to the new Senate report, the Trump administration has not only ‘kneecapped'[ed] The ability of FBI investigators to adequately investigate these allegations, but lack of transparency, misled the Senate and the public about the thoroughness of the investigation.
The years-long review of the Senate investigation comes so late because of a lack of cooperation from the executive branch, Whitehouse said. The Trump administration held up the Senate investigation and while the Biden administration was more cooperative, the senator said that “investigators still struggled to get direct answers to written questions, experienced significant delays in receiving answers to those questions , and often received incomplete answers or answers that completely ignored lines of inquiry.”
The FBI did not comment on the Senate report to CNN, but told the network that it “follows a long-standing, established process that limits the scope of the investigation to what is requested.”
Kavanaugh did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment from the Supreme Court. A spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Confirmation Committee, told the Post that the report “does not provide any legitimate, substantive new basis.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Axios that the report is “another attempt to delegitimize the Supreme Court.” By contrast, Ford’s lawyers told Axios that the report confirmed the Trump White House’s “sham attempt to silence courageous victims and other witnesses who came forward and hide the truth.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
