White House tells FBI to interview only two Kavanaugh accusers

White House directs FBI to interview the first two Brett Kavanaugh accusers, but not the third.

Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland yesterday. Picture: AFP

The FBI has been instructed by the White House to interview two of the women who have alleged sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The parameters of the FBI probe don’t include interviewing Julie Swetnick, who said this week the Supreme Court nominee attended a party decades ago where she was gang-raped, sources said.

The focus on the first two accusations suggests that the White House doesn’t consider Ms Swetnick’s accusations credible, a decision that drew criticism from her lawyer, Michael Avenatti.

The Wall Street Journal has attempted to corroborate Ms Swetnick’s account, contacting dozens of former classmates and colleagues, but couldn’t reach anyone with knowledge of her allegations. No friends have come forward to support her claims.

She has recorded a TV interview to be aired on the NBC network today, the first woman making accusations against the Supreme Court nominee to do so.

Christine Blasey Ford testifies before the Senate judiciary committee. Picture: AFP

Republican senator Jeff Flake demanded on Saturday that the FBI be allowed up to a week to investigate allegations against Judge Kavanaugh before the full Senate considered his nomination. Donald Trump later in the day ordered the FBI to conduct a “supplemental investigation” to Judge Kavanaugh’s routine background check that would be limited to credible allegations of sexual assault and conclude in less than a week.

That investigation, already under way, is being “tightly controlled” by the White House, and the FBI won’t have free rein to pursue all potential leads. It includes instructions to interview Christine Blasey Ford, who testified to the Senate on Friday that Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were teenagers, and Deborah Ramirez, who alleged he exposed himself to her during a drunken party at Yale University.

Judge Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. He told the Senate judiciary committee on Friday that he was too busy with sports to party hard and that it was likely he was out of town when the alleged assault against Dr Ford occurred.

Deborah Ramirez. Picture: AP

White House spokesman Raj Shah said the “scope and duration” of the FBI probe had been set by the Senate. The White House was “letting the FBI agents do what they are trained to do”.

An administration official said the reopening of Judge Kavanaugh’s background case was being handled “as any update to a background investigation would be handled if new, derogatory information is introduced”. “They’re not going to go on a fishing expedition,” the official said.

Speaking as he left the White House for a rally in West Virginia, Mr Trump said the FBI had “free rein” in the Kavanaugh inquiry to “do whatever they had to do, whatever it is that they do.”

“Having them do a thorough investigation, I actually think it will be a blessing in disguise,” Mr Trump said. “It will be a good thing.”

At the rally in Wheeling, Mr Trump used Judge Kavanaugh as a rallying cry for the mid-term elections in November. “We see this horrible, horrible, radical group of Democrats. You see what’s happening right now,” he said. “And they’re determined to take back power by any means necessary. You see the meanness, the nastiness. They don’t care who they hurt, who they have to run over to get power. We’re not going to give it to them.”

Not being granted the authority to interview Ms Swetnick wouldn’t necessarily preclude FBI investigators from asking other witnesses about her allegations.

With some exceptions, the FBI background check doesn’t delve deeply into a nominee’s history before the age of 18. Former FBI officials said they were confident an investigation could be completed by Saturday, noting that full-scope background checks for presidential appointees had to be completed within a couple of weeks.

“If I was in charge of this, I would tell (FBI) director (Chris) Wray, we need to call up every single person on this,” said retired FBI official Jeff Danik. “You don’t want anyone out there who can say in a week or two, ‘They never talked to us, they never heard from us’.”

The Wall Street Journal