NOPE, not even CLOSE.
AFTER NEW DETAILS ON KAVANAUGH INVESTIGATION SURFACE, SENATORS CALL ON FBI FOR ANSWERS ON HANDLING OF ‘TIP LINE’
4,500 tips to FBI went uninvestigated following supplemental investigation, newly released FBI letter shows
Washington, DC – Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray last evening requesting additional information on the FBI’s 2018 supplemental background investigation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The senators’ request follows a letter from the Bureau to Whitehouse and Coons revealing new details on the Kavanaugh background investigation, including that the FBI gathered over 4,500 tips in relation to the investigation without any apparent further action by FBI investigators. The Bureau also confirmed that tips from the tip line were instead provided to the Trump White House Counsel’s office, where their fate is unknown.
“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to . . . allegations’ of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored,” the senators write in their letter sent today. “If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all.”
Whitehouse and Coons initially raised the lackluster supplemental background investigation in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Director Wray in July 2019. Whitehouse observed during the hearing the clear lack of process through which the public or members of Congress could relay information to the FBI after the troubling allegations against Kavanaugh made headlines nationwide. Coons likewise pressed Wray for a clear procedure. As both senators noted, the only conduit for information potentially relevant to the allegations was a “tip line,” the product of which was apparently never pursued by the Bureau. During the hearing, Wray echoed Republican claims that the FBI conducted the investigation “by the book,” while asserting that supplemental background investigations are less rigorous than criminal and counterintelligence investigations.
On August 1, 2019, Coons and Whitehouse wrote to Wray asking for a complete picture of how the FBI handled the supplemental background investigation of Kavanaugh. They asked why the FBI failed to contact witnesses whose names were provided to the FBI as possessing “highly relevant” information; how involved the Trump White House was in narrowing the scope of the investigation; whether the FBI had used a tip line in previous background investigations to manage incoming allegations and information regarding a nominee; and more.
Nearly two years later and after repeated follow-up requests, the FBI finally responded to Whitehouse and Coons’s questions. The June 30, 2021 letter from the FBI Office of Congressional Affairs revealed new information on the Kavanaugh investigation: that Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination “was the first time that the FBI set-up a tip line for a nominee undergoing Senate confirmation,” and that tip line received “over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions.” The FBI apparently pursued none of these tips. Instead, by the FBI’s own account, it merely “provided all relevant tips” to Trump’s Office of White House Counsel, the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation.
Whitehouse, Coons, Durbin, Leahy, Blumenthal, Hirono, and Booker call on the FBI to answer a range of outstanding questions surrounding the Bureau’s use of the tip line and the relevant information it yielded. The senators press the Bureau for any records and communications related to the tip line investigation, including “all relevant tips” described in Wray’s letter that the FBI “provided . . . to the Office of White House Counsel.”
Full text of the senators’ letter yesterday is available below. Also available as PDFs are:
• Senators’ letter sent yesterday;
• June 30 FBI letter to Whitehouse and Coons;
• Whitehouse and Coons August 2019 letter to Wray.
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/after-new-details-on-kavanaugh-investigation-surface-senators-call-on-fbi-for-answers-on-handling-of-tip-line
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FBI failed to fully investigate Kavanaugh allegations, say Democrats
A group of US Democratic senators on Thursday said that newly released materials show the FBI failed to fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against the US supreme court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the court in 2018.
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The senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, said a letter they received from the FBI director, Chris Wray, last month shows the FBI gathered more than 4,500 tips relating to Kavanaugh without any apparent further action by investigators.
“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to … allegations’ of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored.
“If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all,” the Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to Wray sent on Wednesday night, which they released to the public on Thursday.
Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in the early 80s, when they were teenagers at a house party in Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington DC, and he faced other allegations of misconduct following Ford’s harrowing description of an alleged assault when she and Kavanaugh were in high school.
Kavanaugh denied the claims.
His nomination became a huge political fight in Washington and Ford’s devastating and calm testimony in September 2018 mesmerized millions watching on television and was hailed by women’s rights groups as a breakthrough moment for talking about sexual assault.
In angry testimony of his own on Capitol Hill, Kavanaugh fiercely defended himself and blasted what he called a leftwing political hit job on him.
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The FBI was called to investigate the allegations during the Senate confirmation process but was later accused of conducting an incomplete background check, not following up on tips and ignoring potential witnesses.
Whitehouse put out a statement in which he said he and Coons wrote a letter to Wray along with co-signers and fellow Democratic senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.
He said he and Coons initially raised what he called “the lackluster supplemental background investigation” in a Senate judiciary committee hearing with Wray in July 2019.
He pointed out that there was no clear process to the investigation.
On 1 August 2019, Coons and Whitehouse wrote to Wray asking for a complete picture of how the FBI handled the supplemental background investigation of Kavanaugh, Whitehouse’s statement continued on Thursday.
Whitehouse said they asked “why the FBI failed to contact witnesses whose names were provided to the FBI as possessing ‘highly relevant’ information; how involved the Trump White House was in narrowing the scope of the investigation; whether the FBI had used a tip line in previous background investigations to manage incoming allegations and information regarding a nominee; and more.”
Whitehouse had in March of this year asked the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how thoroughly the FBI investigated Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing and said he was seeking answers about “how, why, and at whose behest” the FBI conducted a “fake” investigation.
Then-president Donald Trump selected Kavanaugh as his nominee for the supreme court and refused to turn to an alternative choice when Kavanaugh became engulfed in the scandal of Blasey Ford’s allegations.
One of the new books out on Trump this summer, Landslide by Michael Wolff, claims that Trump later said Kavanaugh was “totally disgraced” by the sexual assault allegations levelled against him during the heated confirmation hearings in 2018 and would have been rejected by the Senate had Trump not defended him.
Wolff writes that Trump said of the judge: “I saved his life. He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/22/brett-kavanaugh-sexual-misconduct-allegations-fbi-senators
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