‘FBI has free rein in Kavanaugh probe’
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when they were students at Yale says she has agreed to cooperate with an FBI investigation.
Deborah Ramirez’s lawyer, John Clune, said Saturday that agents want to interview her. Ramirez has said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party in the early 1980s. Two other women have accused the appeals court judge of sexual misconduct.
US President Donald Trump has ordered the FBI to reopen Kavanaugh’s background investigation. While the scope of the investigation remains unclear, Trump said Saturday that the FBI “has free rein’’ and that he wants agents to interview whomever they deem appropriate.
Ramirez alleges that Kavanaugh exposed his penis to her during a drunken party at a Yale University dormitory when they were undergraduates. Kavanaugh denies both Ford’s and Ramirez’s allegations.
“We can confirm the FBI has reached out to interview Ramirez and she has agreed to cooperate with their investigation,” Clune said in a tweet.
“Out of respect for the integrity of the process, we will have no further comment at this time.”
Trump bowed to pressure from moderate Senate Republicans and ordered the FBI investigation after Thursday’s Senate hearing, during which Ford, a California university professor, detailed her claims that Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a party in 1982 when the two were still high school teenagers.
On Saturday, NBC News reported that the White House had constrained the FBI investigation by limiting its parameters. Trump denied that story, tweeting that “Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion.”
White House spokesman Raj Shah said the Senate had set the “scope and duration” of the FBI probe, which is supposed to be wrapped up in a week. “The White House is letting the FBI agents do what they are trained to do,” Shah said.
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for a third Kavanaugh accuser, Julie Swetnick, said in an e-mail to Reuters that his client has not been contacted by investigators.
If confirmed to a lifetime Supreme Court appointment, Kavanaugh would consolidate conservative control of the nation’s highest court and advance Trump’s effort to shift the American judiciary to the right.