Brett Kavanaugh has been a Supreme Court justice for nearly two years, yet one Democratic senator is still trying to convince people that the judge is a sexual abuser.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) helped elevate one of many dubious claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. Now, two years later, he has reportedly claimed that the FBI ran a “fake” tip line during the time it claimed to be investigating Kavanaugh.
The Washington Free Beacon’s Kevin Daley reported that Whitehouse made the evidence-free claim during a Zoom conference call with an Ohio chapter of the American Constitution Society, described as a progressive judicial group.
“Three attendees told the Washington Free Beacon that Whitehouse twice asserted that the FBI operated a ‘fake’ tip line while purporting to investigate the justice,” Daley reported.
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Mike Davis, formerly a top lawyer to then-Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), denied any such wrongdoing on the part of the FBI. Davis now leads an outside group that supports President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees.
“Senator Whitehouse needs to get his head checked,” Davis told the Free Beacon. “Like all other senators, Whitehouse had access to the FBI’s printed reports with detailed summaries of the tips it received. These FBI reports were provided to the Senate as part of the FBI’s supplement (7th) background investigation of Justice Kavanaugh’s character and fitness over his 25+ years in public service.”
The ACS told the Free Beacon that video of the event will not be available, and the senator’s office did not reply to the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
This is not the first dubious claim from Whitehouse, Daley noted. Whitehouse passed along a blatantly false allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh during the investigation into dubious claims made by Christine Blasey Ford. Ford claimed that at some point in the early or mid-80s (her story changed in the decades since the alleged incident), Kavanaugh groped her at a party when they were both in high school. There’s no evidence the two individuals were ever even in the same room together, that Democrats and their media supporters claimed Ford’s allegations were “credible.” Once Ford made her allegations and began receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars online, other, even more incredible claims of decades-old misconduct against Kavanaugh appeared.
One of the false claims was from Jeffrey Catalan, who reached out to Whitehouse’s office. Catalan claimed Kavanaugh assaulted an unnamed woman on a boat in Newport, Rhode Island, at some point decades ago. Catalan eventually recanted the claim and said it was fake, yet Whitehouse said the fraudster was owed an apology.
“They’re trying to throw him under the bus, I think as a demonstration that other people who come forward will be treated very roughly,” Whitehouse said at the time.
Whitehouse also attempted to paint Kavanaugh as an indebted gambler during his confirmation hearings, providing no evidence to back up his assertions. Kavanaugh denied the allegations, and to date no evidence has surfaced to say otherwise.