Restricted range in Kavanaugh probe
FBI inquiry, which will last days, is a limited background check, not a full-fledged criminal investigation
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the FBI would have “free rein” to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, but the emerging contours of the inquiry showed its limited scope.
Four witnesses will be questioned in coming days about aspects of the assault accusations against Kavanaugh, according to two people familiar with the matter. Left off the list were former classmates who have contradicted Kavanaugh’s congressional testimony about his drinking and partying as a student.
Trump denial
The White House will decide the breadth of the inquiry, although presidential advisers were working in concert with Senate Republicans, said the two people, one a senior administration official, who both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation.
The White House can order investigators to further examine the allegations if their findings from the four witness interviews open new avenues of inquiry, and Trump seemed to stress that part of the plan in a tweet late on Saturday.
“I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion,” Trump wrote.
He denied an NBC News report that he was limiting the inquiry and that investigators were not permitted to examine the claims of Julie Swetnick, a woman who has said that she witnessed a severely drunken Kavanaugh mistreat women at parties in high school and that he had attended parties where high school boys gang-raped teenage girls.
Investigators will interview one of the witnesses, a high school friend of Kavanaugh’s named Mark Judge, about Swetnick’s accusations, the two people said.
The inquiry, which will last no more than a week, is a limited background check of Kavanaugh, not a full-fledged criminal investigation. He has vigorously denied any sexual impropriety or wrongdoing.