FBI REACHES OUT TO BOULDER WOMAN IN KAVANAUGH CASE

Boulder resident is second woman to accuse nominee of sexual misconduct

The bureau has begun contacting people as part of an additional background investigation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, an attorney for Coloradan Deborah Ramirez has confirmed.

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, according to people familiar with the unfolding investigation.

An attorney for Deborah Ramirez has confirmed that the FBI has reached out to the Boulder resident as part of an additional background investigation of Kavanaugh.

Ramirez is the second person to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. She came forward after Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor, accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday about the allegations.

“We can confirm the FBI has reached out to interview Ms. Ramirez and she has agreed to cooperate with their investigation,” said John Clune, an attorney for Ramirez, in an emailed statement. “Out of respect for the integrity of the process, we will have no further comment at this time.”

Ramirez told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while she was at a dorm party during the 198384 academic year at Yale University. Kavanaugh has denied her story.

FBI agents have not yet reached out to a third woman, Julie Swetnick, who alleges that she witnessed Kavanaugh engaged in “excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women in the early 1980s,” said her attorney, Michael Avenatti on Twitter.

“We have yet to hear from the FBI,” he said in a tweet. “When and if we do, we will promptly disclose to them all information and witnesses in our possession.”

The FBI also is following up on allegations by Ford, who testified to the Senate that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s when they were high school students in suburban Washington.

Ford recounted in detail how Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge allegedly attacked her in a bedroom during a small gathering at a house when the teenage boys were drunk. Ford said the alleged attack had caused her lasting trauma, and she was visibly anguished as she recalled the events Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Com

mittee.

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

Republicans on the committee voted Friday to proceed to a full Senate vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, but a series of backroom negotiations led to a surprise twist in what has been a wrenching confirmation process for a Supreme Court nominee, among the most polarizing in recent memory.

Sen. Jeff Flake, Rariz., a key swing vote to confirm Kavanaugh, said he would vote to proceed to a full Senate vote but that the Senate vote should be preceded by a new, expanded FBI investigation of the allegations against Kavanaugh.

Recognizing that Flake and a handful of other senators’ votes appeared contingent upon the investigation, Republican leaders and the White House relented.

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

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday afternoon said the supplemental FBI investigation would be limited to “current credible allegations.” Committee spokesmen did not return a request for comment to elaborate on what specifi cally those allegations are.

Lawmakers and Trump 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 probe, 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.

But already two potentially crucial witnesses have said they will cooperate with the FBI, raising the possibility that at least more statements and recollections will be added to the record, even if they’re not ultimately definitive.

An attorney for Leland Keyser, a friend of Ford’s who Ford says was at the party, said Keyser also was willing to cooperate with the FBI investigation. But the attorney 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 J. 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 alleged assault, has 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 alleged assault, she ran into Judge at a local grocery store where he was working for the summer.

“I said hello to him,” she said. “His face was white and very uncomfortable saying hello back.”

Ford continued, “He was just nervous and not really wanting to speak with me, and he looked a little bit ill.”

In addition to Ford and Ramirez, another woman, Swetnik, who said she knew Kavanaugh in high school, alleged in a sworn statement last week that Kavanaugh and Judge got teenage girls drunk at parties, where the girls were sexually assaulted, sometimes by groups of boys.

Swetnik claimed that she was raped by such a group at a party where Kavanaugh and Judge were present. She hasn’t accused Kavanaugh of raping her.

Swetnik described Kavanaugh as a “mean drunk” in high school who was physically and verbally aggressive with girls.

Kavanugh has denied the accusations from Ramirez and Swetnik and has said emphatically that he never abused or assaulted anyone.