Sen. Grassley Demands DOJ And FBI Investigate Kavanaugh’s Accusers

This week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Ray, demanding that they follow through with a 2019 letter about the “materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” made to Committee investigators about then-Supreme Court Justice Nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“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,” Grassley began.

“These failures are entirely unacceptable,” he continued. “As my colleagues and I stressed in our previous letter, the Committee’s four criminal referrals, dated September 29, 2018, October 25, 2018, October 26, 2018, and November 2, 2018, were not made lightly. Those referrals highlighted serious cases in which individuals made materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements to Committee investigators.”

He added, “The FBI background checks – two of them – didn’t uncover any such evidence, either.  Both of those investigations followed the normal process for FBI background checks of judicial nominees.   As then-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Joe Biden remarked in 1991, in a background investigation the FBI ‘do[es] not reach conclusions” and “do[es] not make recommendations.’  It is the Senate’s responsibility to weigh the information that it collects from the background investigations and from its own investigative work and make a fully informed decision.  That’s what happened here.”

“In the end, the Senate weighed evidence assembled by the FBI and by veteran congressional investigators and fulfilled its Constitutional responsibility by confirming Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Grassley wrote. “It is, however, the responsibility of the Justice Department and FBI to hold those who mislead and obstruct Congress accountable for their criminal behavior.”

The letter comes after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) also sent a letter to Garland, asking him to open up a new investigation into Kavanaugh because the previous investigation was “fake.”