Trump administration undermined FBI investigation into Kavanaugh sexual assault claims: Senate report

WASHINGTON (CN) — Former President Donald Trump’s administration intentionally undermined the FBI’s 2018 investigation of sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Democrats said in a bombshell report published Tuesday.

The survey is the result of a nearly six-year inquiry into the FBI’s supplemental background investigation into then-nominee Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by his former high school classmate Christine Blasey Ford and college classmate Deborah Ramirez. Kavanaugh denies the accusations.

In 2018, the agency conducted a weeklong investigation and did not disclose any corroborating evidence to back up the allegations against the nominee, who was later confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.

That lack of evidence was thanks to active interference from the Trump administration in the FBI probe, according to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Trump exercised “total control” over the federal investigation into Kavanaugh, the report says — drawing from hearings, meetings and written correspondence with the White House, Justice Department and FBI — despite claiming that law enforcement had “free rein” to look into the nominee.

The Trump White House refused to allow investigators to interview certain witnesses which the Democrats said might have uncovered corroborating information on the allegations against Kavanaugh. Lawmakers cited emails between the administration and the FBI which they said demonstrated “strict control” over the probe, limiting interviews to specific people and topics.

In particular, the report said, the White House blocked investigators from meeting with Ford or Kavanaugh themselves.

“This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation,” Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who led the effort, said in a statement.

The Democrats also pointed to a tip line the FBI ostensibly set up to handle reports related to the Kavanaugh allegations. But according to the Senate inquiry, the hotline was actually a “sorting function” used to sift tips related to the high court nominee from the agency’s main information service.

And tips about Kavanaugh, more than 4,500, were forwarded to the White House at the direction of the Trump administration.

“None were investigated or even screened for an indicia of credibility,” the Democrats said in the report.

Lacking investigation standards

The Trump White House’s interference in the Kavanaugh investigation was made worse by the lack of clear policies for such probes, the lawmakers argued. Their review of hundreds of pages of internal agency documents uncovered no specific protocols for supplemental background investigations like the one conducted over the Supreme Court nominee.

The only information available on the process was a 2010 memorandum of understanding with the White House, which set a limited scope on supplemental background investigations and appeared to put the decision to launch such an inquiry at the White House’s sole discretion.

“Senate investigators could not identify — and the FBI did not provide — any FBI document that would guide agents during a supplemental background investigation, beyond instructions from the White House,” the report said.

Despite that, the Democrats pointed out that agency officials have repeatedly told lawmakers that their investigation into Kavanaugh followed standard FBI policies and procedures.

Further, the Trump administration’s apparent move to put a finger on the scale of the Kavanaugh investigation informed Senate Republicans’ decision to back the would-be Supreme Court justice amid the allegations against him, the senators concluded.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who was the Senate majority leader at the time, cited the FBI’s lack of corroborating evidence against Kavanaugh. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also called the accusations against the nominee “uncorroborated” and argued that the FBI could not “locate any third parties that can attest to any of the allegations.”

“Senators routinely rely on FBI background investigations to inform their decisions when fulfilling their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on presidential nominees,” the Democrats’ report said. “It is important to the Senate as an institution that the FBI background process be honest and reliable. The supplemental background investigation process, at least as employed during the Kavanaugh confirmation, does not meet that standard.”

Whitehouse called on the FBI to establish solid protocols for background investigations into presidential nominees, framing it as a countermeasure to ward of future meddling in the Senate confirmation process.

“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from Senate Republicans and the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh,” the senator said. “A full, proper investigation is the bare minimum that victims who come forward — like Dr. Ford and Deborah Ramirez — deserve.”

Some Republicans, meanwhile, pushed back on the Democrats’ report.

A spokesperson for Grassley said the survey doesn’t offer any “legitimate, substantive new ground.”

“It’s also important to note the FBI’s confidential investigation not only failed to corroborate any of the allegations against Justice Kavanaugh, including Ms. Ford’s, it undermined them,” the Grassley spokesperson said. “Senator Whitehouse might recall saying he, himself, was ‘satisfied’ with the FBI’s investigation — all these facts, combined with the timing of this report just weeks ahead of the election, should raise questions about its validity and motive.”

Whitehouse told ABC News in October 2018 that he was “satisfied” with the White House’s approach to the investigation, though his comments appeared to come in the hours before the FBI made its report available to lawmakers. The Rhode Island senator added at the time that he didn’t know “all the details” yet.

“The last thing we want is a sham investigation,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

In a statement Tuesday, Ford’s counsel Debra Katz and Lisa Banks said that the Democrats’ report proves that the Trump administration and Republicans were bent on confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court “by any means necessary.”

“The Congressional report published today confirms what we long suspected: the FBI supplemental investigation of then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh was, in fact, a sham effort directed by the Trump White House to silence brave victims and other witnesses who came forward and to hide the truth,” Katz and Banks wrote. “Congress must take steps to ensure this kind of travesty of justice never occurs again, including by immediately requesting a comprehensive investigation by the FBI Office of Inspector General.”

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