Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has spent nearly three years attempting to understand the nature of the FBI’s “supplemental investigation” of claims that emerged against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in the summer of 2018. The senator’s attempts to get answers from either the Trump White House or the FBI were largely unsuccessful while Trump was still in office. But Whitehouse kept trying—almost as soon as Merrick Garland was sworn in as attorney general, Whitehouse asked him to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how serious the FBI supplemental investigation really was.
Whitehouse asked Garland to explain why there was no mechanism for witnesses to report their accounts to the FBI, and why, after the FBI decided to create a “tip line,” nobody was ever told how the tips were evaluated. In his March letter to Garland, Whitehouse described that tip line as “more like a garbage chute, with everything that came down the chute consigned without review to the figurative dumpster.” Whitehouse asked Garland to explain “how, why, and at whose behest” the FBI conducted a “fake” investigation that violated standard procedures. Whitehouse also asked Garland to probe into the tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt that mysteriously vanished from Kavanaugh’s life in 2016.
And it seems he has finally gotten at least some answers. On Wednesday morning, Whitehouse’s office released a June 30 letter from FBI Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson. The letter is a response to an even older request sent by Whitehouse (and Sen. Chris Coons) asking similar questions about the supplemental background investigation—this one, sent to the FBI in August 2019. Among other revelations, Tyson’s letter indicates that the FBI’s supplemental investigation happened at the direction of the White House, that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received were referred back to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, and that in the days of the follow-up investigation, 10 people were interviewed (it doesn’t say this, but other reporting has confirmed that neither Christine Blasey Ford nor Kavanaugh were among these 10 people). The letter clarifies that this was a supplemental background check, not a criminal investigation because that is what was sought by the White House counsel’s office. Continue reading.