Almost three years after Brett Kavanaugh survived allegations of sexual misconduct to win confirmation to the Supreme Court, the FBI revealed it received more than 4500 tips as part of their background checks.
Seven Democratic senators on Thursday said the new details showed how the FBI failed to fully investigate accusations of wrongdoing and that the Trump White House shaped the vetting process.
The senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Coons, said a letter from the FBI sent last month suggested the tips were not properly investigated and the checks were a sham.
'If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all,' they said in a letter sent to FBI Director Chris Wray.
Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a Maryland party decades ago upending his nomination for the Supreme Court. Now Democratic senators say an FBI background check into him failed to properly investigate thousands of tips
More than 20 million watched Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings as he angrily denied Ford's allegations of sexual assault. He was confirmed in a narrow 50-48 vote
Former President Trump claimed credit for steering Kavanaugh through a rocky confirmation but has recently expressed anger that the Justice has shown an independent streak
A letter sent by FBI assistant director Jill Tyson reveals that a tip line received more than 4500 calls and submissions. 'All relevant tips,' were passed to the Office of the White House Counsel
Kavanaugh was confirmed by a 50-48 majority in October 2018. The process was dominated by the emotional testimony of Christina Blasey Ford, a California university professor who accused him of sexually assaulting her at a party in the early 1980s.
More than 20 million people watched the hearings as Kavanaugh delivered his furious denials.
Ford's accusations prompted two other women to make public complaints about the nominee.
Under pressure from Senate Republican leaders, Trump asked the FBI to conduct a background investigation of Kavanaugh.
And for the first time the FBI set up a tip line as part of the vetting process.
In a letter dated June 30 to the two Democratic senators, FBI assistant director, Jill Tyson, said that the most 'relevant' tips were passed to White House lawyers but offered no further information about how they were treated.
'Over the course of six days, as part of several limited inquiries, the FBI interviewed ten individuals. Because the FBI was again acting in its role as an [investigative service provider] and not as a criminal investigative entity, the authorities, policies, and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,' wrote Tyson.
Neither Ford nor Kavanaugh were interviewed, prompting the senators to also ask whether that was at the direction of the White House.
Ford's lawyers denounced the bureau's handling of the inquiry as a 'sham' and said the tips should have been passed to the criminal investigation division of the FBI.
Debra Katz and Lisa Banks: said: 'Not only did the FBI refuse to interview Dr. Ford or the corroborators listed in our letter to FBI Director Wray, it failed to act on the over 4,500 tips it received about then-nominee Kavanaugh.
'Instead, it handed the information over to the White House, allowing those who supported Kavanaugh to falsely claim that the FBI found no wrongdoing.'
Former President Trump has long taken credit for Kavanaugh's confirmation at a time when many leading Republicans believed the controversy was too damaging.
But a new book recently revealed Trump's anger at Kavanaugh's voting record, after he sided with liberal justices in deciding not to take up a Texas lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results.
In an interview with Michael Wolff, for 'Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,' the former president said he felt betrayed by all three of his Supreme Court nominees, including Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
But he reserved 'particular bile' for Kavanaugh.
'There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to,' he said, according to the book which has been obtained by DailyMail.com.
'Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn't even be in a law firm.
'Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced.
'Only I saved him.'
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