FBI interview one of three women who have accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct

FBI agents have formally interviewed one of the three women who’ve accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.

FBI agents have interviewed one of the three women who have accused US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.

The interview came as Republicans and Democrats quarrelled over whether the bureau would have enough time and freedom to conduct a thorough investigation before a high-stakes vote on his nomination to the nation’s highest court.

The White House insisted it was not “micromanaging” the new one-week review of Mr Kavanaugh’s background but some Democrats claimed the White House was keeping investigators from interviewing certain witnesses.

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President Donald Trump, for his part, tweeted that no matter how much time and discretion the FBI was given, “it will never be enough” for Democrats trying to keep Mr Kavanaugh off the bench.

And even as the FBI explored the past allegations that have surfaced against Mr Kavanaugh, another Yale classmate came forward to accuse the federal appellate judge of being untruthful in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the extent of his drinking in college.

In speaking to FBI agents, Deborah Ramirez detailed her allegation that Mr Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party in the early 1980s when they were students at Yale University, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorised to publicly discuss details of a confidential investigation.

Mr Kavanaugh has denied Ms Ramirez’s allegation.

The person familiar with Ms Ramirez’s questioning said she also provided investigators with the names of others who she said could corroborate her account.

But Dr Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor who says Mr Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers, has not been contacted by the FBI since Trump on Friday ordered the agency to take another look at the nominee’s background, according to a member of Ford’s team. Mr Kavanaugh has denied assaulting Dr Ford.

In a statement released overnight, a Yale classmate of Mr Kavanaugh’s said he is “deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterisation by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale.”

Charles “Chad” Ludington, who now teaches at North Carolina State University, said he was friend of Mr Kavanaugh’s at Yale and that Mr Kavanaugh was “a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker”.

Speaking to the issue of the scope of the FBI’s investigation, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “The White House isn’t intervening.” White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway said the investigation will be “limited in scope” and “will not be a fishing expedition. The FBI is not tasked to do that.” Republicans control 51 seats in the closely divided 100-member Senate and cannot afford to lose more than one vote on confirmation.

Trump initially opposed such an investigation as allegations began mounting but relented and ordered one on Friday. He later said the FBI has “free rein”. At least three women have accused Kavanaugh of years-ago misconduct. He denies all the claims.

‘I am convinced this is a sham’

White House officials faced questions about reports that they want to limit the scope of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe.

The exact contours of the FBI’s investigation weren’t clear and could potentially evolve, as Mr Trump and senior administration officials pushed back against reports that the White House dictated who would be interviewed as part of a reopening of Judge Kavanaugh’s background investigation that politicians agreed to last week before the full Senate considers his nomination.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the weekend that the parameters of the FBI probe, which are determined by the White House, would include interviews with the first two women who publicly accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault but not a third, Julie Swetnick. She said last week in a sworn affidavit that the nominee attended parties decades ago where she was raped and tried to get women drunk at such gatherings. Ms Swetnick didn’t say Mr Kavanaugh raped her. The judge has repeatedly denied all allegations of sexual misconduct.

Michael Avenatti, an lawyer for Ms Swetnick, said in an interview yesterday that the FBI hadn’t contacted either him or his client to arrange an interview.

“With each passing hour that we are not contacted I’ve become more convinced that this is a sham,” Mr Avenatti said. “It’s impossible to do a fair, legitimate and thorough investigation without interviewing the individuals making the allegations.”

Mr Avenatti noted that Ms Swetnick had issued a sworn statement, as opposed to airing the allegations in media interviews, as other accusers have done.

Not being instructed by the White House to interview Ms Swetnick wouldn’t necessarily prevent FBI investigators from asking other witnesses about her allegations.

Late Saturday evening, Mr Trump said on Twitter he had not limited the FBI investigation to only allow interviews with certain individuals.

“Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion,” Mr Trump said.

But one person familiar with the FBI’s thinking said it was unlikely that the shape of the investigation would change without official communication from the White House that it wanted the bureau to interview other people beyond the list already provided.

The FBI has declined to comment on the Kavanaugh probe.

White House officials appearing on Sunday morning news shows rebutted reports that Mr Trump’s team was seeking to limit the investigation but didn’t say that Ms Swetnick would be interviewed.

“The president very much respects the independence of the FBI, and feels as he said last night that they should be looking at anything they feel is credible within this limited scope,” Ms Conway, a senior adviser to Mr Trump, told CNN.

Asked if White House counsel Don McGahn told the FBI who could and couldn’t be interviewed, Ms Conway said she didn’t think Mr McGahn would do that but added that she hadn’t discussed the matter with him. “But we’re not trying to interfere,” she said. “It’s the president saying, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

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Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee and a close ally of the White House, said on ABC Sunday that the FBI would interview the witnesses Dr Ford said were present at an early 1980s teenage house party at which she alleged Mr Kavanaugh assaulted her, as well as Ms Ramirez, who alleged Mr Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken party when they were both freshmen at Yale University.

Asked if it would also include an interview with Ms Swetnick, Mr Graham indicated it currently did not. Mr Graham did say that Mark Judge, a high-school classmate of Mr. Kavanaugh’s whom Dr Ford says was in the room at the time of her alleged attack in the early 1980s, would be interviewed. Ms Swetnick has said Mr Judge was “present” when she was victimised in 1982. Mr Judge’s lawyer has denied those allegations and said he doesn’t recall the events described by Dr Ford, who testified about them before senators last Thursday.

A group of Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee told the White House what they would like to see in the supplemental background investigation, “and we’re facilitating that,” according to a White House official.

“If the Senate changes what they’d like to see, we’d probably change what we’ve told the FBI to do,” the official said, adding that the bureau had some flexibility in how they could carry out the background check.

The Senate “has made clear who should be interviewed and who should not, ” the official said, and the White House has conveyed that message to the FBI.

The White House official also confirmed that Mr Graham spelled out during his Sunday morning appearance the list of witnesses to be interviewed. They are Dr Ford, Ms Ramirez and the witnesses Dr Ford said were present at the party, including Mr Judge, Mr Graham said.

FBI background investigations are different from criminal investigations in that they are done at the request of a “client” — in this case the White House — and investigators are unable to deploy search warrants or grand jury subpoenas. Potential witnesses are allowed to decline requests to be interviewed.

Democrats questioned whether the FBI’s hands were being tied unfairly in order to reduce the possibility that investigators could find something damaging against Judge Kavanaugh.

Senator Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said on ABC that all three accusers should be able to speak with the FBI.

“They all came forward with credible reports,” Ms Hirono said. “They all said they would be willing to talk to the FBI. The only person that didn’t want an FBI investigation, frankly, was Judge Kavanaugh.”

With AP, Peter Nicholas and Julie Bykowicz of the Wall Street Journal