The results of the one week-long investigation by the FBI into the sexual assault allegations against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, were released on Thursday without ever having interviewed the two principals in the investigation. Lawyers for Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, are calling that FBI investigation a “stain on the process, on the FBI and on our American ideal of justice.”
Ford’s legal team releases letter to FBI director Wray questioning why their client was not interviewed during the supplemental investigation and actually offers names of people who “would have challenged” Kavanaugh’s credibility. pic.twitter.com/ONbBq6HmU2
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 4, 2018
CNN reports that in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, attorneys Debra Katz, Lisa Banks and Michael Bromwich said that several other people with information relevant to the case were ignored.
‘The attorneys said the FBI also did not interview witnesses with information relevant to Ford’s allegations, and in their letter, they provided a series of suggested witnesses who they said were still available to speak with investigators.
‘The people in the letter include the former FBI agent who conducted Ford’s polygraph in August, Ford’s husband and friends of Ford’s who said Ford told them of an assault.’
The FBI report on Judge Kavanaugh is entirely incomplete and insufficient. There are dozens of witnesses who have not been interviewed. This is for a lifetime appointment. The American people deserve to have all the facts.
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) October 4, 2018
Since neither Dr. Ford nor Judge Kavanaugh were interviewed by the FBI, no list of corroborating witnesses from either the accused nor the accuser was obtained. Dr. Ford’s attorneys did send a list of names, but none of them were contacted, either, the attorneys say.
‘None were contacted nor, to our knowledge, were more than a dozen other names we provided to the FBI whose interviews would have challenged the credibility of Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 27, 2018.’
I just reviewed the FBI’s #Kavanaugh report. The FBI never interviewed many relevant witnesses. There are also thousands of pages of leads from the tip line that received no follow up. It’s clear the White House only wanted the FBI to go through the motions & that’s what it did.
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) October 4, 2018
Republicans insist that the two have already been given a chance to speak during the hearings in sworn testimony, but investigations in which an eye witness to a crime has come forward, it is impossible to imagine that any investigator would not want to speak to that person. In this case, the eyewitness is a woman alleging sexual assault by a powerful, white man.
A distinguished Princeton Professor of Reformation History, Kenneth Appold, vividly recalls learning of the Deborah Ramirez Yale incident with his suitemate Brett Kavanaugh the day it happened. A real FBI inquiry would interview him, and nearly 40 others.https://t.co/CGBTLkN3XB
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) October 4, 2018
That, apparently, changes all the rules.
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
