FBI back to digging into Kavanaugh past

Agents contact second accuser, so far not third

WASHINGTON — The FBI has begun contacting people as part of an additional background investigation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, including a second woman who alleges that the Supreme Court nominee sexually assaulted her.

The bureau has reached out to Deborah Ramirez, a Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s who alleges that he shoved his genitals in her face at a party where she had been drinking and became disoriented, her attorney said Saturday.

“She has agreed to cooperate with their investigation,” Ramirez attorney John Clune said in a statement. “Out of respect for the integrity of the process, we will have no further comment at this time.”

President Donald Trump ordered the new background investigation of his nominee on Friday under pressure from key members of his party.

Late Saturday, Trump said the FBI investigation “will be a blessing in disguise. It will be a good thing.”

In brief remarks to reporters before leaving for a rally in West Virginia, the president said he continues to believe Kavanaugh didn’t do anything wrong. “He’s a good man. He’s a great judge. A great judge. Highly respected for many, many years,” Trump said.

The FBI also is following up on allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, who testified to the Senate last week that Kavanaugh

sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s when they were in high school in suburban Washington, D.C.

But Michael Avenatti, an attorney for Julie Swetnick, who alleged that Kavanaugh and another boy got teenage girls drunk at parties, where the girls were sexually assaulted, sometimes by groups of boys, said Saturday that Swetnick has not been contacted by the bureau.

Swetnick said in a sworn statement last week that she knew Kavanaugh in high school and was raped by a group of boys at a party where Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were present. She has not accused Kavanaugh of raping her. Swetnick described Kavanaugh as a “mean drunk” in high school who was physically and verbally aggressive with girls.

Kavanaugh has called her accusations a “joke,” and Judge has said he “categorically” denies the allegations.

“We have not heard anything from the FBI, and with each passing hour, I’m growing increasingly concerned that this is a sham of an investigation,” Avenatti said. He noted that Swetnick has had multiple security clearances and that lying in a sworn declaration would be disastrous to her career.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday afternoon said the supplemental FBI investigation would be limited to “current credible allegations.”

Leaving the hearing Friday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said it was his understanding that there would be an FBI investigation of “the outstanding allegations, the three of them,” but Republicans have not said whether that was their understanding, as well.

A committee spokesman Saturday declined to elaborate beyond the statement.

Also Saturday, White House spokesman Raj Shah said: “The scope and duration has been set by the Senate. The White House is letting the FBI agents do what they are trained to do.”

Democrats were not included in a call that Republican staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee held with the White House discussing the FBI investigation, according to an official familiar with the discussion.

While the precise scope of the investigation remains unclear, Trump told reporters Saturday that “the FBI, as you know, is all over talking to everybody.”

“They have free rein. They’re going to do whatever they have to do, whatever it is they do. They’ll be doing things that we have never even thought of,” he said. “And hopefully at the conclusion everything will be fine.”

ACCUSATION, DENIAL

During Thursday’s testimony, Ford recounted in detail her allegations that Kavanaugh and Judge attacked her in a bedroom during a small gathering at a house when the teen boys were both drunk. Ford said the attack had caused her lasting trauma, and she was visibly anguished as she recalled the events before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

After Ford’s testimony, Kavanaugh vigorously denied the allegations before the committee and accused Democrats of launching a last-minute attempt to derail his nomination. He decried the confirmation process as a “circus.”

Each of the people Ford identified as being at the gathering — Judge, Leland Keyser and P.J. Smyth — has said they will cooperate with the FBI.

An attorney for Keyser, a friend of Ford’s, emphasized that Keyser has no recollection of the party where Ford alleges Kavanaugh assaulted her.

“Notably, Ms. Keyser does not refute Dr. Ford’s account, and she has already told the press that she believes Dr. Ford’s account,” the attorney, Howard Walsh III, wrote in an email to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “However, the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate it because she has no recollection of the incident in question.”

Judge, the high school friend of Kavanaugh who Ford says was in the room during the assault, has also agreed to cooperate with the FBI. His account has been particularly sought after because, unlike Kavanaugh, Judge has not denied Ford’s allegations but has said he has no memory that such an assault occurred.

Ford told the Judiciary Committee that some weeks after the assault, she ran into Judge at a grocery store where he was working for the summer.

“I said ‘hello’ to him. His face was white and very uncomfortable, saying ‘hello’ back,” she said. “He was just nervous and not really wanting to speak with me, and he looked a little bit ill.”

According to Ford, a boy named “PJ” was also at the gathering but not in the room where the assault occurred.

Last week, Smyth, who attended Georgetown Prep high school with Kavanaugh, told the Judiciary Committee that he had no knowledge of the gathering or of any improper conduct by Kavanaugh. On Friday, Smyth said through his lawyer that he was “happy” to cooperate with the investigation.

Kavanaugh has denied the accusations by Ramirez and Swetnick, and has said emphatically that he never abused or assaulted anyone. He has also pointed to half a dozen other background checks the FBI conducted on him for other federal positions over the years, none of which raised evidence or allegations of sexual assault.

On Friday, Republicans on the committee voted to proceed to a full Senate vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, but a series of backroom negotiations

led to the investigation.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a key vote for confirming Kavanaugh, said Friday that he would vote to send the confirmation to the full Senate, but that the Senate vote should be preceded by a new, expanded FBI investigation of the allegations against Kavanaugh.

Later that day, Trump ordered the investigation and that it be limited in scope and completed by next Friday.

Lawmakers and administration officials had few expectations that the FBI would settle Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s dueling accounts. A background investigation is, by its nature, more limited than a criminal one, and FBI agents will not be able to obtain search warrants or issue subpoenas to compel testimony from potential witnesses.

The FBI’s interviews, which will take a few days to conduct, won’t turn into a sprawling inquest of everyone Kavanaugh went to a party with in high school, said a person familiar with the investigation.

The FBI’s findings will not necessarily become public. When investigators have completed their work, anything they’ve discovered will be turned over to the White House as an update to Kavanaugh’s background check file.

The bureau will not reach a conclusion on whether the accusations are credible and will not make a recommendation on what should become of Kavanaugh’s nomination.

The White House would then likely share the material with the Senate committee. At that point, all senators, as well as a small group of aides, would have access to it.

The White House or the

Senate would decide what, if anything, should be released publicly.

MARYLAND REACTION

Also on Saturday, the chief of police and the state’s attorney in Montgomery County, Md., said they are not investigating sexual-assault allegations against Kavanaugh but are “prepared to investigate any allegation, should a victim come forward.”

In a letter responding to a petition from county legislators, Police Chief J. Thomas Manger and State’s Attorney John McCarthy said they believe the decision to report a sexual assault “must be made by the survivor.”

“To date, there have been no criminal reports filed with the Montgomery County Department of Police that would lead to the initiation of any criminal investigation related to Judge Kavanaugh,” they wrote.

A group of state legislators from the county had called on police and prosecutors to investigate allegations that Kavanaugh committed one or more sexual assaults while he was a high school student at Georgetown Prep in the 1980s. They asked authorities not to wait for a victim to make a complaint to them before starting an investigation.

Manger and McCarthy said they agreed with experts that “the willingness of a survivor to come forward to law enforcement is an important factor in any criminal investigation.”

The two also noted that under laws that existed in 1982 — the approximate time of events described by Ford about Kavanaugh’s alleged actions at a high school party — assault and attempted rape were misdemeanors subject to a one-year statute of limitations.

Nevertheless, they wrote, “the Montgomery County Police Department and the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office stand ready to investigate any sexual assault allegation from any victim where the incident occurred in our jurisdiction.”

Information for this article was contributed by Shane Harris, Matt Zapotosky, Tom Hamburger, Seung Min Kim, Aaron Blake, Emma Brown and Alex Horton of

The Washington Post; by Michael Balsamo, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; and by Jim Joyner and Luke Broadwater of The Baltimore Sun.