WASHINGTON -- The White House has authorized the FBI to expand its abbreviated investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long as the review is finished by the end of the week, two people briefed on the matter said Monday.
The new directive came in the past 24 hours after a backlash from Democrats, who criticized the White House for limiting the scope of the bureau's investigation into President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court. The FBI has already interviewed the four witnesses its agents were originally asked to talk to, the people said.
Trump said Monday that he favored a "comprehensive" FBI investigation and had no problem if the bureau wanted to question Kavanaugh or even a third accuser who was left off the initial witness list if she seemed credible. His only concerns, he said, were that the investigation be wrapped up quickly and that it take direction from the Senate Republicans who will determine whether Kavanaugh is confirmed.
"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."
Still, Trump slammed Senate Democrats during a campaign rally in Tennessee on Monday night. "If we took 10 years, they'd want more time," he groused.
The broadening inquiry produced an unusual spectacle as friends and classmates from Kavanaugh's past provided dueling portraits of the nominee in his younger days -- either a good-natured student incapable of the alleged behavior or a stumbling drunk who could easily have blacked out and forgotten inappropriate behavior at alcohol-soaked parties.
How far the FBI will now delve into these questions beyond the original high school-era sexual assault allegation lodged by Christine Blasey Ford remained unclear. Senate Democrats sent the bureau a list of two dozen witnesses they insisted must be interviewed for an inquiry to be credible. Another accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has given the bureau the names of more than 20 people she said witnessed Kavanaugh exposing himself during a college party or heard about it at the time or later, according to someone involved in the investigation.
Senate Republican leaders, however, made clear that they planned to move forward with the confirmation without waiting for the results of the investigation. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, said the Senate would take a procedural vote Friday so it could move quickly to final confirmation once the inquiry was over.
Chastising Democrats on the Senate floor, McConnell said that he would "bet almost anything" that they would be unsatisfied with the scope of the investigation regardless of how far it went. Reading through a selected summary of Democrats' comments about the matter, he said, "Do these actions suggest this has ever been about finding the truth?"
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said that the White House counsel should make public what he has told the FBI and emphasize that it was not "the partisan Republican Senate staff that is directing this investigation." In an interview, Schumer added, "You can do a full investigation in the seven-day requirement, and that's what senators on both sides of the aisle expect."
Trump said he instructed his White House counsel, Donald McGahn, over the weekend to tell the FBI to carry out an open investigation, although he included the caveat that it should accommodate the desires of Senate Republicans. McGahn followed through with a call to the FBI, according to the people briefed on the matter.
"I want them to do a very comprehensive investigation, whatever that means, according to the senators and the Republicans and the Republican majority," Trump said.
Asked if the FBI should question Kavanaugh, Trump said: "I think so. I think it's fine if they do. I don't know. That's up to them."
As for Julie Swetnick, the third accuser who has claimed that Kavanaugh attended parties during high school where girls were gang raped, Trump said he would not object to her being interviewed. "It wouldn'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 ordered the one-week FBI investigation Friday after Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a 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 Ford; and Ramirez. Agents may return to Judge for more questions.
Flake expressed concern Monday that the inquiry not be limited and said he had pressed to make sure that happens. "It does no good to have an investigation that gives us more cover, for example," he said in a public appearance in Boston. "We actually need to find out what we can find out."
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who worked with Flake to initiate the limited investigation, called McGahn on Sunday after reading reports about the narrow mandate. Coons said he was alarmed by what he heard and informed other senators who pushed for the inquiry in hopes that they would relay their own concern to McConnell.
"He said some things I found very reassuring about doing it by the book and sharing promptly interview product with the Judiciary Committee," Coons said in an interview Monday with the News Journal of Delaware. "But he also said things that I found very concerning about the scope, the number of witnesses, the process."
Other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, sent a letter to McGahn and Christopher Wray, the FBI director, on Monday providing a list of two dozen witnesses they believe must be interviewed for an inquiry to be credible.
In addition to the four witnesses already interviewed by the bureau, the list includes Ford; Swetnick; Christopher Garrett, who dated Ford in high school and introduced her to Kavanaugh; and other high school and college friends of Kavanaugh's identified in news reports. The senators also said the bureau ought to examine employment records from a Safeway grocery store where Ford said Judge worked around the time of her encounter with Kavanaugh.
'PARTISAN SCREED'
Democrats, meanwhile, are raising new questions about the truthfulness of Brett Kavanaugh's sworn testimony to the Senate.
Schumer accused Kavanaugh of delivering a "partisan screed" during the Judiciary Committee hearing last week. He said Kavanaugh seemed willing to "mislead senators about everything from the momentous to the mundane" to ensure his ascension to the high court.
"The harsh fact of the matter is that we have mounting evidence that Judge Kavanaugh is just not credible," Schumer said Monday.
Not so, argued McConnell, contending the Democrats are simply looking to "move the goalposts" to prevent Kavanaugh's confirmation.
McConnell mocked the questions from Democrats about Kavanaugh's drinking in high school and college. He said Kavanaugh was "rightfully angry" about the accusations, and he added, "Who wouldn't be?"
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, said Kavanaugh has only been responding to Democratic attacks.
"He's on trial for his life, so is his spouse, so are his parents, so are his kids, and he got mad. Now they are criticizing him for getting mad. I think that's the height of hypocrisy."
Former classmates painted conflicting portraits of Kavanaugh. Dan Murphy, who lived in the same suite as Kavanaugh at Yale University, said in a written statement that descriptions of a boorish drunk were "simply wrong" and incompatible with his experience.
But Charles Ludington, another Yale classmate, told reporters outside his home in North Carolina that he saw Kavanaugh so drunk that he could have easily forgotten his actions. Ludington said he did not think that loutish behavior at age 18 or 21 should condemn a person for life, but lying to the Senate at age 53 should matter. "There were certainly many times when he could not remember what was going on," he said.
Ludington called Kavanaugh "a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker." He recounted one incident in 1985, in which he said Kavanaugh threw a beer in another man's face, precipitating a brawl that drew in a third friend -- Yale basketball star and future NBA player Chris Dudley -- and eventually prompted a call to police.
The barroom fisticuffs were the most searing example of Kavanaugh's behavior he remembers, Ludington said in an interview with Bloomberg News, where he expanded on his statement for the first time.
"It was sort of a general feature of hanging out with Brett in college," he said. "When you're having beers on a Friday or Saturday night, that was kind of Brett's shtick. He was aggressive. He was belligerent."
His detailed account of the melee couldn't be independently corroborated.
But The New York Times obtained a police report of the incident, which resulted in Kavanaugh and four other men being questioned by the New Haven Police Department. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him "for some unknown reason."
A witness to the fight said Dudley then hit the man in the ear with a glass, according to the police report.
The report said the victim, Dom Cozzolino, "was bleeding from the right ear" and was later treated at a local hospital. A detective was notified of the incident at 1:20 a.m.
Dudley denied the accusation, according to the report. For his part, speaking to the officers, Kavanaugh did not want "to say if he threw the ice or not," the police report said.
The report referred to the altercation, which occurred at a bar called Demery's, as "an assault." It did not say whether anyone was arrested, and there is no indication that charges were filed.
'HE SAID, SHE SAID'
Also on Monday, Senate Republicans released a five-page report questioning the account of Ford. The report was written by Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona sex crimes prosecutor hired by Republicans to handle the questioning of Ford and Kavanaugh for them at last week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Ford 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 Ford 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 Ford'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 does not remember anything matching her description and that he never saw Kavanaugh mistreat women. Two other people Ford 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 believes Ford, a point not made in Mitchell's report.
Information for this article was contributed by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Emily Bazelon and Ben Protess of The New York Times; by Lisa Mascaro, Darlene Superville, Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo, Mary Clare Jalonick and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; and by Alan Levin, Ben Brody and Chris Dolmetsch of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/02/2018