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Dear John,
We are just now learning that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh were a sham, based on a woefully incomplete FBI investigation of allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted two women, one in high school and one in college.
Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, came forward in September 2018, when she described being pushed into an upstairs bedroom by Kavanaugh and a friend of his at a small gathering. The two young men reportedly locked the door and played loud music to prevent her calls for help from being heard as Kavanaugh assaulted her.
Shortly after Ford’s revelations, another woman, Deborah Ramirez, told the New Yorker that, while she and Kavanaugh were both undergraduates at Yale, Kavanaugh “exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party.”
The confirmation hearings were delayed for a week, supposedly to give the FBI time to investigate the allegations. However, we are learning now, due to a report by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, that then-President Trump sharply curtailed the number of witnesses the FBI was permitted to interview, and he defined the parameters of what questions they could ask.
In the end, despite receiving over 4,500 tips, the FBI interviewed only 10 people. Of course, the drastically diminished investigation yielded no corroborating evidence, since the FBI was not allowed to interview individuals who could have provided it. This lack of evidence was cited by at least 3 Republican senators -- enough to have potentially tipped the 50-48 vote to confirm.
Tell the FBI: No one is above the law, including Supreme Court justices. Reopen the Kavanaugh sexual assault investigation now.
Trump claimed at the time that the FBI was free to interview anyone they wished, but the new report indicates this was, simply, a lie. In fact, according to the report, the “Trump White House strictly controlled which witnesses the FBI was authorized to interview and which leads the FBI could follow.”
The FBI was not even allowed to interview the two individuals who could speak from firsthand knowledge as to what happened: Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh himself. As for the over 4,500 tips the FBI received, they simply forwarded them directly to President Trump without any further investigation, whereupon they promptly disappeared altogether.
How many key witnesses were never interviewed? How many leads were dropped? It’s time we had a full recounting. Who knows what we might have discovered had they been pursued? A nomination to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court must be fully investigated, as the American people deserve to know the fully transparent truth.
No one is above the law, despite the court’s own twisted interpretations of the Constitution, and we have no kings or infallible judges. It’s time we heard all the facts concerning the allegations against Justice Kavanaugh.
Demand a full investigation of the Kavanaugh evidence by the FBI, free of political influence, and without bias or preconceptions. We deserve nothing less.
Thank you for taking seriously our obligation to hold our highest court accountable.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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