Sheldon Whitehouse is the junior Senator from the great state of Rhode Island (junior as in newer than his senate colleague also from RI, despite being almost 70 years old); his personal lineage is heavy with wealthy businessmen and political or diplomatic types, and – as a part of his senatorial duties – he published an interesting and necessary (to this political nerd) follow-up report on the allegations against lifetime appointee (grrrrrrrr) Brett Kavanaugh (grrrrr) as a part of his work on the senate’s judiciary committee. Because I can, I have distilled the report for you, my darlings. You’re welcome!
Here it is, edited and copied directly from his report, which is linked at the end of this distillation summarizing the report (which is heavy with repetition) for your reading pleasure? Edification? Education? Enragement? Enlightenment? All of those and nothing those of us watching the Kavanaugh hearings didn’t already know in our MeToo guts, but – them’s the breaks. Please note that any references to ‘the White House’ refers to the Trump administration. Why does this matter? It matters because it’s a lifetime appointment, and because Kavanaugh is one of several appointees to the Supreme Court who has shown complete indifference to the lives and needs of women in this country, which makes perfect sense given his history. Read on…
The report’s conclusions are: First, the Senate’s reliance on the FBI’s supplemental background investigation to inform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was misplaced. Multiple Senators expressly cited the supplemental background investigation’s apparent inability to uncover corroborating evidence of the allegations against Kavanaugh as a ground for voting to confirm Kavanaugh. Yet the supplemental background investigation was flawed and incomplete, as the FBI did not follow up on numerous leads that could have produced potentially corroborating or otherwise relevant information.
Second, while President Trump publicly claimed the FBI had “free rein” to take any investigative steps it deemed necessary, the Trump White House exercised total control over the scope of the investigation, preventing the FBI from interviewing relevant witnesses and following up on tips. The White House refused to authorize basic investigatory steps that might have uncovered information corroborating the allegations.
Third, although the Trump Administration and the FBI assured the Senate that the FBI’s investigation was being conducted “by the book,” they failed to disclose that there was actually no “book” at all. The FBI produced no written protocols for supplemental background investigations, saying it was merely acting as the “agent” for the White House in such matters. Although this undisclosed practice of requiring step-by-step instructions from the White House for supplemental background investigations may be appropriate for following up on discrete, relatively minor questions that routinely arise during a nominee’s initial background investigation, it was uniquely inappropriate for investigating the serious, high-profile allegations against Kavanaugh. Not only did this practice enable the Trump Administration to kneecap FBI investigators’ ability to adequately investigate those allegations, but the lack of transparency misled the Senate and the public about the investigation’s thoroughness.
Fourth, the FBI’s tip line was not used to facilitate the FBI’s supplemental background investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh. On instructions from the White House, the FBI did not investigate thousands of tips that came in through the FBI’s tip line. Instead, all tips related to Kavanaugh were forwarded to the White House without investigation. If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information.
The Senators’ oversight inquiry reveals disturbing gaps in the FBI’s supplemental background investigation process for judicial nominees—gaps that enabled the White House to undermine the Senate’s ability to reliably exercise its advice and consent responsibility with respect to the Kavanaugh nomination. While these shortcomings may be relevant only in extreme circumstances like the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation, Senators, the FBI, and the White House should work together to correct them to avoid a similar episode in the future.
The FBI’s supplemental background investigation concluded despite credible allegations from two different women, hundreds of witness leads and tips the FBI received, and the high stakes of a life-tenured Supreme Court nomination, the FBI ultimately interviewed only ten people. According to an “executive summary” of the FBI’s supplemental background investigation issued by the Judiciary Committee majority, these people were “all witnesses with potential firsthand knowledge of the allegations.” The FBI did not, however, interview Ford or Kavanaugh—the witnesses potentially with the most firsthand knowledge—nor did it speak to other potentially corroborating witnesses who had not witnessed the events firsthand. Nonetheless, the Judiciary Committee Republicans’ executive summary concluded that the “Supplemental Background Investigation confirms . . . there is no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez.”
Stonewalling from the executive branch (The Trump admin.) in response to Senators’ requests for information about the FBI’s supplemental background investigation started while that investigation was ongoing. … Even following Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the Trump Administration repeatedly thwarted Senate investigators’ subsequent attempts to get to the bottom of how the supplemental background investigation was conducted. …
Only through repeated, persistent inquiries over more than a half decade did Senate investigators discover that the Trump White House controlled the scope and conduct of the supplemental background investigation, specifically engineering it to exclude evidence that could have corroborated the allegations against Kavanaugh. All the while, the Trump Administration and FBI misled the public and the Senate about the investigation’s scope, claiming the FBI had complete discretion to take all investigative steps and that it conducted the supplemental background investigation “by the book.”
Former classmates or friends of Ford, Ramirez, and Kavanaugh reported difficulty getting the FBI to respond to their outreach…After being unable to speak to anyone or after being redirected to and from FBI field offices, many people resorted to the agency’s online and telephonic “tip line.” The FBI reported receiving “over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions,” related to the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation. None were investigated or even screened for indicia of credibility.
During the Kavanaugh investigation, officials at the National Threat Operations Center forwarded any tips pertaining to Kavanaugh to the Security Division. On September 29, 2018, the White House directed the FBI to treat all tips “the same way that other leads have been handled”—i.e., by forwarding them to the White House without further investigation, no matter how reliable or corroborative the tips seemed.
On those instructions, the Security Division treated tips received during the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation as if its investigation were closed: The Security Division turned over all “relevant” tips to the White House Counsel’s Office without investigation. A Security Division official subsequently told Senate investigators that the Security Division reviewed these tips only for relevancy to Kavanaugh and to remove duplicates. On at least two occasions, Security Division officials pointed the White House to specific tips, because of the information provided or the apparent identity of the individual who provided the information. The White House did not authorize the FBI to follow up on those tips. If anything, there is a danger that the tip line was used by the White House to steer FBI investigators away from relevant or corroborative information. (Y’think?!!)
The FBI’s supplemental background investigation into the sexual-assault allegations against Kavanaugh was unreliable, not because of FBI ineptitude, but because the Trump White House tightly controlled the scope of the investigation, preventing the FBI from conducting a thorough investigation that followed all relevant leads as it would in other investigative contexts. The Trump White House strictly controlled which witnesses the FBI was authorized to interview and which leads the FBI could follow. Indeed, the Trump White House specifically declined to authorize the FBI to interview witnesses and pursue tips that might have uncovered the corroborating information some Senators later claimed was lacking.
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/KavanaughReport_final.pdf