Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday there’s no corroboration of sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in a supplementary FBI report submitted to the Senate.
“I’ve now received a committee staff briefing on the FBI’s supplement to Judge Kavanaugh’s background investigation file. There’s nothing in it that we didn’t already know,” Grassley said in a statement.
{mosads}“These uncorroborated accusations have been unequivocally and repeatedly rejected by Judge Kavanaugh, and neither the Judiciary Committee nor the FBI could locate any third parties who can attest to any of the allegations. There’s also no contemporaneous evidence,” he added.
“This investigation found no hint of misconduct … I’ll be voting to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”
Grassley made his statement after being briefed by Senate GOP staff who viewed the report.
Senators have been filing into and out of the secure compartmented information facility in the Capitol Visitor Center to view the report Thursday morning. They are being granted access to the results of the confidential FBI background investigation into the allegations brought forward against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford and two other women. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.
GOP lawmakers said the FBI failed to find any significant evidence backing Ford’s claims after interviewing an additional 10 witnesses — going beyond the four witnesses that a group of three GOP lawmakers, Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.), requested.
“They wound up interviewing 10 people, not four. They were given the latitude they wanted, nobody told them where to go, who to interview or how to interview them,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, after reviewing the report.
“The main thing for me is the FBI did a professional job,” he added. “I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know.”
Collins, a key swing vote, praised the thoroughness of the FBI report.
“It appears to be a very thorough investigation,” she told CNN.
Flake, another key vote, said he saw “no additional corroborating information” in an initial review of the FBI report.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, initially declined to comment after reviewing the document.
She later told reporters that the FBI report “looks to be the product of an incomplete investigation that was limited.”
“Perhaps by the White House,” she added. “I don’t know.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he disagreed with Grassley’s assessment “that there was no hint of misconduct” in the FBI’s report.
“We had many fears that this was a very limited process that would constrain the FBI from getting the facts. … Those fears have been realized,” Schumer said.
Deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah said in a statement early Thursday that the White House is now “fully confident the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.”
“This is now the 7th. time the FBI has investigated Judge Kavanaugh,” President Trump later tweeted. “If we made it 100, it would still not be good enough for the Obstructionist Democrats.”
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has vowed to bring Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate this week, though several key GOP and Democratic senators have so far refused to say how they will vote.
—Last updated at 11:49 a.m.