The crowd at President Trump’s rally Sunday afternoon in Macon, Ga., serenaded him with “Lock Her Up” chants after he mentioned a woman who admitted she had lied about sexual assault allegations about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“A woman who accused then Judge Kavanaugh of horrible, horrible crimes admitted that she never met Judge Kavanaugh or Brett Kavanaugh or a Kavanaugh period. Never met him, never saw him, and the act never happened and it was a lie. It was a total lie. She made up the story and was forced to admit it,” Trump said.
On Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, referred a woman who had claimed to have written an anonymous letter sent to Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., for allegedly false statements she made during the committee’s investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Grassley said that Judy Munro-Leighton contacted the committee via email on Oct. 3 and said she was the author of the handwritten Sept. 19 letter signed by Jane Doe of Oceanside, Calif., that detailed an encounter in which Kavanaugh and a friend allegedly sexually assaulted the writer.
When asked in late September about the letter’s allegations, Kavanaugh testified under oath, “[T]he whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn’t happen, not anything close.”
Committee investigators first tried to contact her during the confirmation hearings, and finally succeeded Thursday. Munro-Leighton, who does not live in California and is much older than Kavanaugh, told staff she was not the author of the letter and had contacted the committee as a ploy, Grassley said in his letter referring Munro-Leighton for investigation.
The claims of Munro-Leighton weren’t publicly disclosed during the confirmation process. Kavanaugh’s path to the Supreme Court was marred by sexual assault allegations. Though he was ultimately confirmed and sworn in to be an associate justice, the FBI had to conduct a supplemental investigation into the claims by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez.
Late Saturday, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee released a report that it said completely exonerates Kavanaugh from “numerous allegations” of sexual misconduct.
“This was a serious and thorough investigation that left no stone unturned in our pursuit of the facts,” wrote Grassley in a statement about the 414-page report. “In the end, there was no credible evidence to support the allegations against the nominee.”
