Kavanaugh’s fate rests with FBI
United States
The FBI embarked on a highstakes investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh yesterday, ahead of a vote this week that will shape the contours of the United States for decades to come.
Donald Trump, the US president, on Friday evening, local time, threw his support behind the investigation, which is designed to search for any information supporting either Kavanaugh’s emphatic insistence that he never sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford at a party in 1982, or Ford’s unwavering belief that he did.
Trump said the FBI’S inquiry ‘‘must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week,’’ after which the Senate will vote on whether to approve Kavanaugh to the lifelong role of justice on the Supreme Court.
James Gagliano, a retired supervisory special agent at the FBI, said that compiling all the information in a week, from an incident 36 years ago, was ‘‘a damn daunting – if not impossible – task’’. But, he added, it was the ‘‘right path’’. The investigation into the alleged incident, which Ford said took place at a house in Maryland, will be run from the FBI’S Washington DC office, with oversight at the most senior levels. Extra officers are likely to be drafted in to meet the deadline. ‘‘They could drop everything else they’re doing, every other background check for generals to get the next star, and cabinet secretaries and US attorneys,’’ said Tom Fuentes, a former FBI assistant director. ‘‘If they want to put 500 agents on this they could do that.’’
One of their tasks will be speaking to possible corroborating witnesses. Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend, was said by Ford to be in the room when the then 17-year-old Kavanaugh allegedly hustled her into a bedroom, closed the door, pinned her to the bed and attempted to rip off her clothes.
Judge, who has been hiding out at a beach house in Delaware for the past week, declined to speak at Friday’s hearing, but has said he is willing to speak to the FBI. He denies all knowledge of the attack.