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MEMORANDUM TO: Senate Republicans
FROM: Office of the Chairman, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) DATE: November 2, 2018 RE: Senate Judiciary Committee Investigation of Numerous Allegations Against Justice Brett Kavanaugh During the Senate Confirmation Proceedings
Introduction In the weeks leading up to Justice
Brett Kavanaugh’s
Senate confirmation vote on October 6, 2018, investigators from the United States Senate Committee
on the Judiciary (“Committee”)
diligently pursued all relevant allegations made against the nominee. This memorandum summarizes the
Committee’s
work and provides a status update
on the Committee’s ongoing
efforts to review and address additional matters that arose during the course of the investigation, including potential violations of Senate rules, potential witness tampering, and potential false statements made to the Committee in violation of federal law. Background On July 9, 2018, the President announced the nomination of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Kavanaugh had served with distinction for more than 12 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit, the nation’s most important federal circuit court.
The Senate received the nomination the next day. Shortly after the nomination, the White House
Counsel’s Office
provided a routine copy of the FBI background-investigation report on the nominee. The report marked the sixth occasion the FBI conducted a full-field background investigation of Justice Kavanaugh for a public service position, going back to his first FBI report in 1993. As is routine, the FBI report included statements from individuals who knew the nominee, as well as an examination of his finances and credit history, tax payments, criminal and employment histories, medical history, substance abuse history, and foreign contacts. These six FBI reports over a 25-year period, containing interviews with nearly 150 individuals who knew Justice Kavanaugh personally (including many individuals who have known Justice Kavanaugh his entire life), did not reveal any alcohol abuse or inappropriate sexual behavior. Over the course of the next two months, the Committee continued to gather relevant information about the nominee to best assist its members in evaluating
Justice Kavanaugh’s
qualifications and fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. The Committee sent Justice Kavanaugh the most comprehensive Senate Judiciary Questionnaire (SJQ) submitted to any Supreme Court nominee in history, and it received and reviewed Justice
Kavanaugh’s response
of nearly 18,000 pages. The Committee reviewed all of Justice
Kavanaugh’s published writings, his 307 judicial
opinions and the hundreds more opinions he joined, all available footage and transcripts from his public appearances, all books that used him as a resource, and more than 500,000 pages of documents related to his past legal service in the Executive Branch. While the Committee reviewed these materials, Justice Kavanaugh participated in one-on-one meetings with 65 senators. Justice Kavanaugh also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than 32 hours
2 from September 4-6, 2018. He subsequently responded to nearly 1,300 post-hearing written questions for the record (QFRs) submitted by members of the Committee
—
more questions than have been asked of all prior Supreme Court nominees combined.
Despite the Committee’s
best efforts to ensure a timely and thorough review, an eleventh-hour news report released the day before a scheduled Committee vote on Justice
Kavanaugh’s
nomination disrupted
the Senate’s exhaustive confirmation process
. On September 12, 2018, the media reported that Ranking Member Feinstein possessed a letter from an unidentified woman detailing an incident involving her and Justice Kavanaugh when they were in high school. As
details of that allegation unfolded, the Committee’s
Majority Nominations Unit paired with the Committee
’s
Oversight and Investigations Unit to investigate the allegations. These joint efforts,
with up to 40 attorneys, law clerks, and other professionals from the Chairman’s staff,
continued over the following month as the Committee received several additional allegations of sexual misconduct. Summary of the Investigation T
he Committee’s
investigative efforts consistently modeled the standard process and procedure employed by its Oversight and Investigation Unit. Committee investigators gathered information from various sources, including: (a) individuals who contacted the Committee directly by phone, email, or through the whistleblower tip line; (b) interviews of individuals with knowledge relevant to the allegations; (c)
information referrals from individual Senate member offices; (d) media reports; (e) the Department of Justice; (f) Dr. Christine Blasey Ford; and (g) Justice Kavanaugh. If the Committee determined through its initial review of information and investigative research that a particular individual had relevant information, Committee investigators attempted to verify the identity of the individual using open-source research tools and other methods. Committee investigators then contacted the individual or
the individual’s
counsel if the Committee knew the individual was represented by an attorney. As a general practice, interviews of this nature are staffed by teams of two or three investigators, which include attorneys and federal law enforcement detailees with years of experience conducting government investigations. A court reporter transcribed each interview with Justice Kavanaugh. For all other interviews, investigators took live notes via computer and in written form to document the conversation in the greatest detail possible under significant time restraints. If a witness was willing to provide a written statement to the Committee, investigators discussed the process and procedure for doing so and the possibility of, and risks attendant to, the statement or any portion thereof becoming public. The Committee
’s
Majority staff investigative practices are designed to ensure a certain level of confidentiality for those who request it. During this investigative process, depending on the level of confidentiality requested, witnesses were explicitly cautioned that confidentiality could not be guaranteed in every case because information would be shared with Senate offices that may not have the same confidentiality policy. Some witnesses wrote statements independently before being interviewed by Committee investigators. Importantly, witness statements to the Committee are subject to 18 U.S.C. § 1001, a statute that criminalizes making
3 materially false statements to Congress, and 18 U.S.C. § 1505, a statute that criminalizes obstructing a congressional investigation. All interviews were conducted in an objective and fair manner aimed at producing a final determination of fact with respect to the allegations levied against Justice Kavanaugh. In order to accomplish that, investigators conducted extensive interviews with individuals who knew Justice Kavanaugh in high school and college; investigators also conducted extensive interviews with individuals who knew the accusers in order to better weigh the credibility of their allegations. In sum, the Committee spoke to 45 individuals and collected 25 written statements. A large portion of individuals providing testimony in support of Justice Kavanaugh asked that their names be redacted out of fear that their statements might result in personal or professional retribution or personal physical harm
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or even risk the safety and well-being of their families and friends. The Committee respected all requests for anonymity. Accordingly, some aspects of this memorandum are redacted. In addition to conducting interviews, Committee investigators continuously monitored social media and news reports. They also reviewed all documentary evidence submitted by Justice Kavanaugh, his accusers, and other witnesses. Finally, the Committee conducted a supplemental daylong hearing and asked the White House to direct the FBI to reopen its investigation of Justice Kavanaugh to explore potential credible allegations pending against the nominee. The Committee received that supplemental FBI background investigation report on October 4. All senators and a limited number of appropriately cleared Committee staff had the opportunity to review it in a secure facility on October 5 and 6. After an extensive investigation that included the thorough review of all potentially credible evidence submitted and interviews of more than 40 individuals with information relating to the allegations, including classmates and friends of all those involved, Committee investigators found no witness who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against Justice Kavanaugh. In other words, following the separate and extensive investigations by both the Committee and the FBI, there was no evidence to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault made against Justice Kavanaugh. The details of the Committee
’s
investigation, broken down by claim, are provided below.
The Ford Allegations
In a letter to Senator Feinstein dated July 30, 2018, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Justice Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s, while they were both high-school students, at a gathering in a home near the Columbia Country Club in Maryland. However, Senator Feinstein kept the Committee in the dark about the letter until September 12, 2018, when she briefed Committee Democrats, but not Republicans, on the contents of the letter. The
Intercept
reported on the existence of the letter on September 12, 2018, and provided limited details regarding its content.
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The following day, the
New York Times
stated
that “[t]wo officials familiar
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Ryan Grim,
Dianne Feinstein Withholding Brett Kavanaugh Document from Fellow Judiciary Committee Democrats
, The Intercept (Sept. 12, 2018), Available at https://theintercept.com/2018/09/12/brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-dianne-feinstein/.