Dem senator charges FBI's 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh was 'fake'

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is calling the FBI’s background investigation into Brett Kavanaugh ‘fake’ – as he demands the bureau be held to account for its activity during the Supreme Court Justice’s bitter confirmation process.

Whitehouse made the claim in a blistering letter to new Attorney General Merrick Garland Monday, where he revisited the charged 2018 confirmation, when Kavanaugh’s fate hung in the balance amid accusations of sexual assault.

The Rhode Island Democrat accused the FBI of failing to follow its own guidelines for how to conduct probes and sort through tips of information provided by accusers and witnesses to the alleged events. And he said the bureau never properly probed the fact of the matter of whether Kavanaugh assaulted accuser Christine Blasey Ford at a party decades ago as she claims he did.

With accusations flying against Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, senators delayed a vote for a week to allow for a supplemental FBI investigation. But according to Whitehouse, the agency quite possibly conducted its probe ‘with drawbridges up and a fake ‘tip line’ – then proceeded to ‘stonewall’ the matter.

Or, he argued, the agency may have been operating under rules that are themselves out of whack. ‘It cannot and should not be the policy of the FBI to not follow up on serious allegations of misconduct during background check investigations,’ he said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse called the FBI’s 2018 background probe into now-Supreme Justice Brett Kavanaugh ‘fake’ as he demanded information about it

What happened next did not please Whitehouse. It ‘appears to have been a politically-constrained and perhaps fake FBI investigation into alleged misconduct by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh,’ he wrote.

He noted that Kavanaugh disputed her testimony – he angrily denied it in his confirmation hearing – so there were ‘questions of fact’ to resolve.

The FBI never interviewed Blasey Ford, nor did it interview Kavanaugh.

‘Max Stier, the widely respected president of the Partnership for Public Service, and a college classmate of Mr. Kavanaugh, offered specific corroborating evidence, but the FBI refused to interview Mr. Stier,’ he wrote.

As people brought forward information, ‘the FBI had assigned no person to accept or gather evidence,’ Whitehouse wrote.

‘In addition to showing some cursory efforts to corroborate Dr. Ford’s hearing testimony, our brief review showed that a stack of information had indeed flowed in through the ‘tip line,’ he added.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse blasted the FBI’s handling of the Kavanaugh probe in a letter to the new attorney general

Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a Maryland party decades ago

Whitehouse grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray over the bureau’s failure to respond to questions

Whitehouse wrote new attorney Merrick Garland about the FBI probe and other oversight matters

Kavanaugh’s confirmation was rocked by Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault

Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor, brought forth stunning accusations during Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. She claimed he sexually assaulted her decades ago during a party while both were high school students in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs.

She had written California Rep. Anna Eshoo and Sen. Dianne Feinstein outlining the allegations after Kavanaugh was nominated.

She would later testify before the Senate Judiciary once her allegations became known.

‘I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to. But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget,’ she told the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.’

Blasey Ford, who attended an all girls private school, said she and friends sometimes socialized with friends from other nearby private boy’s schools, and that she was friendly with a classmate of Kavanaugh’s.

She said she attended a small gathering at a house she does not remember, that she drank one beer that night, and that Kavanaugh and his friend mark were ‘visibly drunk.’

She testified that she went upstairs to use a bathroom, and that she was ‘pushed from behind’ into a bedroom. She said Kavnaaugh and his friend Mark [Judge] came in and locked the door behind them.

‘I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me,’ she told the Senate. ‘He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy.’

She said Kavanaugh groped her and tried to take her clothes off. ‘I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.’

Ultimately, she said she was able to get away and lock herself in a bathroom, at which point the two young men left the room. She says she was later able to walk downstairs and leave the house.

Kavanaugh furiously denied the allegations. He then faced a series of questions about past drinking, and acknowledged to senators that he drank beer. ‘I drank beer with my friends’ he said in a statement. ‘Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer.’ He said he never assaulted anyone.

Blasey Ford’s accusations threatened to derail Kavanaugh’s nomination by President Donald Trump to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the high court.

Republicans agreed to a week-long delay for the FBI to investigate the allegations, which President Trump ordered it to carry out. They did so after GOP Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) aligned with Democrats on the subject.

Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the panel chair, said it would be to probe ‘current credible allegations’ against Kavanaugh. It was not a full-on probe with subpoena power. Instead, the FBI conducted what was known as one of its ‘special presidential inquiries, which usually involve voluntary in-person interviews with a subject and witnesses. The probe into the allegations was not a criminal investigation.

The FBI reached out to a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who claims Kavanaugh exposed his penis to her during a drunken party at a Yale University dormitory when they were undergraduates. But she said the FBI did not follow up on names she provided.

Mark Judge, who Blasey Ford says was in the room with Kavanaugh during the alleged assault, said he had no memory of the events she described and denied the allegations.

Kavanaugh furnished high school calendars to establish he never sexually assaulted Blasey Ford when he was a student at Georgetown Prep school. It showed a packed schedule with summer camp and beach trips. One entry said: ‘Go to Timmy’s for skis w/ Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi,’ with a reference to beers and some of the people Blasey Ford identified knowing.

‘It did not appear, however, that any review had been undertaken of any of the information that flowed through this tip line. We could get no explanation of the tip line procedures,’ he continued.

The background investigation faced not only time constraints, but those relating to its scope, the Washington Post reported in 2018. The probe appears to have focused on Blasey Ford’s allegations, but not claims about Kavanaugh’s alleged drinking and whether he was truthful about it.

The bureau interviewed another accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who claims Kavanaugh exposed himself to her when they both attended Yale. But she said there were not indications the FBI interviewed the 20 names she provided who might have information about the alleged incident.

Whitehouse concluded: ‘If standard procedures were violated, and the Bureau conducted a fake investigation rather than a sincere, thorough and professional one, that in my view merits congressional oversight to understand how, why, and at whose behest and with whose knowledge or connivance, this was done.’

Whitehouse tore into FBI Director Chris Wray during his recent testimony in the Senate, demanding the bureau be responsive to questions and requests for information.

‘You going to do any better with the questions that we’re getting right now?’ he pressed Wray at the Judiciary Committee. ‘You’ve been asked questions for the record. Are they going to go into the same, whatever it was, hole where questions for the record go to die at the FBI?’

He told CBS the bureau’s conduct was ‘not tolerable.’

Whitehouse wrote that some witnesses who wanted to share information weren’t able to do so. ‘This was unique behavior in my experience, as the Bureau is usually amenable to information and evidence; but in this matter the shutters were closed, the drawbridge drawn up, and there was no point of entry by which members of the public or Congress could provide information to the FBI,’ he wrote.

He also pressed Garland on other regulatory matters, from anti-trust issues to fossil fuels and IRS enforcement of the ‘explosion’ of political activity by nonprofits after the Citizens United ruling.

Garland vowed during his own confirmation, which went through on a bipartisan vote, not to let politics interfere with decision-making at the agency. He has his own experience with the Senate’s confirmation process. He never got a hearing from the Republican-controlled Senate after President Barack Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court.

‘The department has received and is reviewing the letter,’ a Justice Department spokeswoman told DailyMail.com. The FBI had no comment.

source: dailymail.co.uk