FBI failed to fully investigate Kavanaugh allegations: Democrats

The FBI failed to fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the court in 2018, according to newly released materials.

Seven Democratic senators on Thursday said a letter they had received from the FBI last month shows it gathered over 4,500 tips pertaining to its investigation of the claims against Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh was the second of three jurists former Republican president Donald Trump appointed to lifetime spots on the top court during his term, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority.

His nomination, however, blew up into a personal and political drama when university professor Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in Washington in 1982.

Two other women also accused him in the media of sexual misconduct in the 1980s.

Trump, however, refused to turn to an alternative choice when Kavanaugh became engulfed in the scandal.

The FBI, which was then asked to conduct investigation into the allegations, was later accused of conducting an incomplete background check, not following up on tips and ignoring potential witnesses.

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On June 30, assistant FBI Director Jill Tyson wrote to Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Chris Coons (Del.), disclosing how many tips the agency received as part of the probe.

Tyson was responding to an August 2019 inquiry, in which Whitehouse and Coons raised concerns that the White House had set limits on the investigation.

According to Tyson, Kavanaugh’s nomination was the first time the agency had set up a tip line for a nominee undergoing Senate confirmation. She said all “relevant tips” were referred to the Office of the White House Counsel.

However, it was not clear from Tyson’s letter if the FBI followed up on any of the tips.

The lawmakers said the details “corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts” of people who said they tried to give information to the FBI but were ignored.

On Wednesday, a group of Democrats, led by Whitehouse and Coons, wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray seeking explanations about the revelation.

“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 the letter released to the public on Thursday.

The revelation “also belies the former president’s insistence that his administration did not limit the Bureau’s investigation of Justice Kavanaugh, and his claim that he ‘want[ed] the FBI to interview whoever they [sic] deem appropriate, at their discretion’,” the lawmakers noted.

Democrats have also said that the US Justice Department, which the FBI is part of, was politicized under Trump and tried to advance his interests.

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