A top Senate Republican demanded a status update from the Justice Department and FBI regarding criminal referrals the Senate Judiciary Committee submitted following “bogus” sexual misconduct allegations made against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process to the Supreme Court.
“On October 8, 2019, several colleagues and I wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr and Director Wray requesting an update concerning their handling of criminal referrals made by the Committee following its investigation into allegations of decades-old misconduct by then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh,” Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter sent this week.
“To date, the Justice Department and FBI have failed to respond to our letter and have failed to apprise the Committee whether, and to what extent, any steps have been taken to investigate and hold accountable those individuals who criminally interfered with the Committee’s investigation,” the Iowa Republican added.
Kavanaugh, a nominee of former President Donald Trump, was confirmed by the Senate in a 50-48 vote in October 2018 but not before a cloud was cast over the entire process due to multiple sexual misconduct allegations, including from Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexual assault when they both were teenagers.
Grassley, who is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said a total of four criminal referrals were sent in 2018 for “materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” made about Kavanaugh, who denied the claims.
One of the referrals “related to an individual from Rhode Island who falsely alleged to Congress that Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted a friend on a boat, only to later admit on social media that he lied about the event,” Grassley said. Another “related to Ms. Judy Munro-Leighton, a woman who claimed to be the author of an anonymous letter stating that Judge Kavanaugh and a friend raped her ‘several times each’ in the back seat of a car. Ms. Munro-Leighton later admitted that she falsely claimed that she was the author of the letter and its allegations and only claimed authorship of the letter ‘as a way to grab attention,'” Grassley wrote.
The other two of the referrals pertained to “Michael Avenatti and his client, Ms. Julie Swetnick, who accused Judge Kavanaugh of being involved in gang rape activities,” the senator said.
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Avenatti, a lawyer who has since been convicted of felony extortion, was a thorn in Trump’s side while he represented adult film star Stormy Daniels in litigation against the Republican. Trump was eventually ordered to pay $44,000 in legal fees in August 2020.
Grassley said, “Kavanaugh underwent six FBI full-field background investigations prior to his nomination,” in addition to supplemental screenings following the accusations, none of which yielded evidence of the crimes he was accused of partaking in. He added that “these false allegations materially impeded the Committee’s work and diverted important Committee resources during its time-sensitive investigation.”
The senator further demanded that both the FBI and the Department of Justice compile a response by April 6, which he said should include “a full explanation of the steps the Justice Department and FBI have taken to investigate the Committee’s four criminal referrals for investigation of potential violations.”
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Grassley isn’t the only senator seeking answers from the Biden administration.
A top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, recently resurfaced the Supreme Court hearings of Kavanaugh, requesting Attorney General Merrick Garland investigate the FBI’s background check on the judge, which he said was “fake.”
