Don’t blame the FBI for not following every lead in its investigation into Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said former FBI Director James Comey.
“I would love to see maximum transparency, but I think the focus on the bureau is misplaced,” Comey told an audience Monday evening during a book discussion in Washington, D.C., with his former special assistant Josh Campbell.
In contrast with other inquiries that are directed internally and “special agents will follow leads the ends of the earth,” Comey said the constraints of the Kavanaugh inquiry can be traced back to the White House and Congress. “I promise you it wasn’t an FBI decision,” Comey said.
Kavanaugh is back in the news this week after a pair of New York Times reporters brought to light an allegation that the judge made inappropriate sexual contact with a female student at Yale University in the mid-1980s. The FBI reportedly did not investigate the newly-publicized claim, which came from a fellow male student.
During Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee gave the FBI a week to conduct its reopened background check and they interviewed 10 witnesses about the alleged instances of sexual misconduct. That number is only a fraction of the more than 50 names provided by the bureau by lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, two women who leveled accusations against Kavanaugh.
Democrats are calling the FBI’s supplemental background investigation a “sham” and are demanding answers about who constrained their efforts. Liberal activist organizations and some 2020 Democratic candidates have also called for Kavanaugh to be impeached.
On the Republican side, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh’s confirmation, defended the panel’s review as “incredibly thorough.” “My team spoke with 45 individuals and took 25 written statements,” Grassley said on the Senate floor on Monday. “In the end, there was no credible evidence to support any of the allegations.”
Although Comey was not director during the Kavanaugh saga last year after having been fired by President Trump in May 2017. Republicans and Democrats alike, however, have criticized him for his handling of investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and Russian election interference, as well as his handling of sensitive information. Trump has stirred outrage against the FBI, describing the bureau as “corrupt” and full of “dirty cops.”
No stranger to backlash in the political arena, Comey offered insight into the conundrum faced by his successor, Christopher Wray, while also stating he does not want to be an “armchair quarterback” that creates blowback for the current director.
Where the FBI’s credibility is an issue, Comey said the response in an ideal world would be to offer all the facts to “foster confidence” in the American people.
“As the FBI director, you have to be thoughtful about what impact you making a disclosure about what you did during an investigation might have on future Senate relationships or future White House relationships, but those are the places for people to go ask questions,” Comey said. “What did you allow the bureau to do and what didn’t you allow the bureau to do?”
[Also read: James Comey ‘highly confident’ he won’t be indicted]
