Dem Report Finds FBI Probe Into Brett Kavanaugh's Past Left 'Disturbing Gaps'

When Christine Blasey Ford rocked now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination hearing in 2018 by publicly testifying that he groped and sexually abused her at a party 30 years earlier, then-president Donald Trump claimed that the FBI would fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against him.

That investigation had serious flaws, according to a report released Tuesday by a top Senate Democrat.

Though Trump claimed the agency was “talking to everybody” and had “free rein to do whatever they have to do,” the newly released report , “Unworthy of Reliance: The Flawed Supplemental Background Investigation Into Sexual-Assault Allegations Against Justice Brett Kavanaugh,” argues otherwise.

The report was authored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The FBI produced nothing when asked to show “written protocols” it had in place to investigate the abuse claims, according to the report, which relies on interviews, internal FBI documents and some 500 pages of correspondence between the agency and the Trump White House.

The report notes that in 2018, it was public knowledge that the FBI had never directly questioned Ford or Kavanagh directly about the misconduct claims and attorneys for Ford and provided the FBI “with dozens of names of additional witnesses whom the attorneys said could corroborate” Ford’s claims, the report found.

But these leads were never fully pursued. In the end, the FBI conducted just 10 interviews.

Democrats sent a list of the names of witnesses they thought the FBI should look into in October 2018. One of those witnesses was a former college classmate of Kavanaugh’s, and he eventually contacted a U.S. senator because he