Trump Calls for ‘Comprehensive’ FBI Inquiry of Kavanaugh Accusations but ‘Within Reason’

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that he favored a “comprehensive” FBI investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh that could include more interviews beyond those originally authorized by his White House, but said he would defer to Senate Republicans on how to direct the bureau.

Responding to Democrats who have complained about the apparently limited scope of the FBI inquiry, Trump said he would have no quarrel if it wanted to interview people other than the four witnesses named by his White House counsel. His only concern, he said, was that the investigation be wrapped up quickly.

“The FBI should interview anybody that they want within reason but you have to say within reason,” Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden after an event celebrating a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico. “But they should also be guided, and I’m being guided, by what the senators are looking for.”

Trump ordered a one-week FBI investigation Friday after Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a key swing vote on the nomination, insisted that the allegations be examined before he committed to voting to confirm Kavanaugh on the floor. But the White House and Senate Republicans gave the FBI a list of just four people to question: Mark Judge and P.J. Smyth, high school friends of Kavanaugh’s; Leland Keyser, a high school friend of his main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford; and Deborah Ramirez, another of the judge’s accusers.

Trump said he instructed his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to permit an open investigation if Senate Republicans wanted one. “I want them to do a very comprehensive investigation, whatever that means, according to the senators and the Republicans and the Republican majority,” he said. “I want them to do that. I want it to be comprehensive. I think it’s actually a good thing for Judge Kavanaugh.”

Asked if the FBI should question Kavanaugh, Trump said, “I think so. I think it’s fine if they do. That’s up to them.”

As for Julie Swetnick, the third accuser who has alleged that Kavanaugh attended parties during high school where girls were gang raped, Trump said he would not object to her being interviewed. “It woudn’t bother me at all. Now I don’t know all three of the accusers. Certainly I imagine they’re going to interview two. The third one I don’t know much about.”

He added that he understood she had “very little credibility” but added that “if there is any credibility, interview the third one.”

Trump made clear that he would not take into consideration concerns of Senate Democrats in fashioning the scope of the FBI inquiry. Instead, he expressed indignation that Democrats were questioning Kavanaugh’s youthful drinking and suggested some of them were being hypocritical because they themselves abuse alcohol.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

“I happen to know some United States senators, one who’s on the other side who’s pretty aggressive,” he said. “I’ve seen that person in some very bad situations,” which he called “somewhat compromising.”

He would not identify whom he meant, but he did later single out Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a favorite target, for misleading the public for years about his military service during the Vietnam War. “This guy lied when he was the attorney general of Connecticut,” Trump said. “He lied.”

The president was referring to a 2010 article in The New York Times reporting that Blumenthal had told audiences that he had “served in Vietnam,” implying he had fought in the war, when in fact he served in the Marine Reserve in the United States at the time.

The president went further, saying that Blumenthal had boasted of fighting in Da Nang. “We call him ‘Da Nang Richard,’” he said. “And now he’s up there talking like he’s holier than thou.” In fact, the Times article did not report that Blumenthal had ever claimed to fight in Da Nang or any other specific battle. He noted that he did serve in “the Vietnam era” but said he took “full responsibility” for what he called “a few misplaced words.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Trump’s comments came at the same time that Senate Republicans released a five-page report questioning the account of Blasey, the California university professor who also goes by her married name Ford. The report was written by Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona sex crimes prosecutor hired by Republicans to handle the questioning of Blasey and Kavanaugh for them at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Blasey said at the hearing that a drunken Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, tried to take her clothes off and covered her mouth when she tried to scream during a high school party in the 1980s.

“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove,” Mitchell wrote. “But this case is even weaker than that.” The report noted that the other people Blasey identified being at the gathering did not remember anything like what she described and it pointed out other inconsistencies that it suggested undercut her credibility.

“I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the committee,” Mitchell wrote. “Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.”

The lack of corroboration has complicated Blasey’s story. Not only has Kavanaugh denied her accusation, the other boy she identified being in the room at the time, Judge, has said that he did not remember anything matching her description and that he never saw Kavanaugh mistreat women. Two other people Blasey recalled being elsewhere in the house then, Smyth and Keyser, also told the committee in written statements that they did not remember the party in question, although Keyser has separately told The Washington Post that she believed Blasey, a point not made in Mitchell’s report.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Mitchell also focused on other seemingly less significant distinctions, such as the fact that Blasey was described as afraid to fly but has nonetheless flown to Washington and other destinations.

Mitchell argued that Blasey was inconsistent because she testified that she told her husband she was the victim of “sexual assault” but told The Post that she had told him she was the victim of “physical abuse.”

Mitchell did not explain why she thought “sexual assault” and “physical abuse” were inconsistent and she incorrectly implied that Blasey used the phrase “physical abuse” when in fact those words were not in quotation marks in the Post article and were therefore the reporter’s paraphrase. Moreover, The Post attributed that to her husband, not to Blasey.

Mitchell also made much of the fact that Blasey said she could not remember whether a polygraph test that she took in August occurred on the day of her grandmother’s funeral or the day after, nor could she remember whether it was recorded. And she could not remember whether she showed notes from her therapist to a Post reporter or simply described them.