U.S. Sen. Susan Collins criticized Thursday a “partisan inquiry” from a Democratic senator who released a report claiming the FBI in 2018 did not fully investigate sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The report this week from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, also accused former President Donald Trump’s administration of limiting the FBI’s probe into Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated before Collins cast a key vote to help confirm him in October 2018 that led to a strong Democratic electoral challenge against her in 2020.
What’s the context: Whitehouse, who chairs a Senate subcommittee on federal courts, said the FBI conducted a “flawed and incomplete” investigation into Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual misconduct described by two women who came forward in 2018, including a professor who told senators Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school.
Whitehouse’s report also asserted the FBI did not investigate thousands of tips it received in connection to the Kavanaugh probe but passed them along to the White House. While Trump said in 2018 the FBI had “free rein” to take necessary steps, Whitehouse’s report said “the Trump White House exercised total control over the scope of the investigation.”
During highly contentious confirmation hearings in 2018 that also featured testimony from Christine Blasey Ford, one of the women who made allegations against Kavanaugh, the judge denied the accusations. The FBI conducted a background investigation into Kavanaugh that did not verify claims made against him before senators voted 50-48 to confirm him that fall.
Why it matters: Democrats hammered Collins for her vote, which followed public statements in which she said Kavanaugh told her he believed the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision granting a federal right to an abortion was “settled law.”
The senator’s role in the confirmation prompted the record-smashing Democratic campaign against her in 2020 that Collins won over then-House Speaker Sara Gideon
In 2022, Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cemented by Trump overturned the Roe decision, a decision that Collins criticized as “seismic and radical.”
What they’re saying: Through a spokesperson on Thursday, Collins defended the FBI’s work and said that she had supported additional background investigations and the extra hearing to hear from Ford and described Whitehouse’s report as “the result of a partisan inquiry.”
“It distorts the purpose of the FBI’s routine background investigation that is conducted for all judicial nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee,” spokesperson Annie Clark said. “The FBI does not draw conclusions, least of all about culpability. It presents the facts.”
President Joe Biden’s FBI also defended its role, saying in a statement that it does not have the authority to expand the scope of these investigations beyond what the White House requests.
Ford’s lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said Whitehouse’s report confirmed the FBI investigation was a “sham” that gave cover to Republicans to confirm Kavanaugh. A Trump campaign spokesperson slammed the report as a way to “delegitimize the Supreme Court.”
Why it matters: Abortion remains a key issue in this presidential election year, and the Whitehouse report brings back to light one of the most controversial Supreme Court confirmation hearings in decades that had big implications on Maine politics, although it’s unclear whether the report from one Democratic senator will resonate for long.
