Senate Democrat: Trump White House controlled ‘flawed and incomplete’ FBI Kavanaugh investigation

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) released a report Wednesday that accused the Trump administration’s FBI of conducting in 2018 a “flawed and incomplete” investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who at the time was still a nominee.

Whitehouse, chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee focused on federal courts, released his report titled “Unworthy of Reliance,” which details the allegations against Kavanaugh and the “uniquely inappropriate” lack of procedure in the FBI’s investigation into the allegations.

“Although the Trump administration and the FBI assured the Senate that the FBI’s investigation was being conducted ‘by the book,’ they failed to disclose that there was actually no ‘book’ at all,” Whitehouse wrote in the report.

Former President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to sit on the Supreme Court in July 2018. Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford brought allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1980s against Kavanaugh, and two other women came forward with stories of their own.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held special sessions to hear testimony from both Kavanaugh and Ford. Trump later ordered the FBI to supplement its initial background investigation into Kavanaugh by investigating the new claims.

In the report, for which Whitehouse began investigating in 2021, he argued the Senate “misplaced” its reliance on the FBI’s investigation to confirm Kavanaugh to the court. The FBI’s investigation did not uncover corroborating evidence of the allegations.

“Yet the supplemental background investigation was flawed and incomplete, as the FBI did not follow up on numerous leads that would have produced potentially corroborating or otherwise relevant information,” the report said.

Whitehouse also said that while Trump claimed the FBI had “free reign” over the investigation, in actuality, the Trump White House “exercised total control over the investigation” and prevented the FBI from interviewing relevant witnesses and following up on tips. The FBI’s tip line was not used in the investigation on instruction from the White House. Tips were instead forwarded to the White House without investigation, the senator said.

“If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information,” the report alleges.

The Rhode Island Senator said the FBI did not produce written protocols for how it conducts its supplemental background investigations. While the background investigations are standard for every other Supreme Court nominee, Whitehouse argued it was inappropriate for there to be no record-keeping for the “serious, high-profile allegations” against Kavanaugh.

“Not only did this practice enable the Trump Administration to kneecap FBI investigators’ ability to adequately investigate those allegations, but the lack of transparency misled the Senate and the public about the investigation’s thoroughness,” Whitehouse said in the report.  

Whitehouse acknowledged that while the shortcomings he found in the report may only be relevant in an extreme nomination process like Kavanaugh’s, he said the Senate, White House and FBI should “work together to correct them to avoid a similar episode in the future.”

In a statement to The Hill, the FBI said it responds to requests from the Office of the White House Counsel and other government entities to conduct background investigations on certain candidates.

“In these investigations, the FBI follows a long-standing, established process through which the scope of the investigation is limited to what is requested,” the FBI’s statement said. “We have consistently followed that process for decades and did so for the Kavanaugh inquiry.”

The FBI said it does not have independent authority to expand an investigation’s scope like Kavanaugh’s, and the procedure is different from a criminal investigation that would grant the agency “broad authority” over investigative decisions.

The Hill has reached out to Trump and Kavanaugh for comment.