investigating whistle-blower claims made him well-suited to pilot Kavanaugh’s nomination through his committee. The nominations unit handled it first. When the initial allegations were made public, the powerful oversight and investigations unit joined the work. Forty attorneys and law clerks were now deposing witnesses and investigating alleged crimes.
Federal law enforcement officials with years of experience conducting government investigations had been detailed to the committee, where they worked with the committee’s attorneys and investigators to interview witnesses. A court reporter transcribed interviews. Witnesses were also warned that making false statements to Congress is a crime, carrying the same penalties as perjury and lying to the FBI—five years in federal prison.
Working with whistle-blowers requires a high degree of concern for confidentiality, but the committee’s investigators had to warn those they talked to that confidentiality could not be assured. Some members of the committee might not have the same policy on confidentiality, as Senator Booker’s “Spartacus” outburst made clear.
The committee staff interviewed people who knew Kavanaugh and people who knew his accusers, weighing their credibility. All told, they spoke to forty-five persons and collected twenty-five witness statements. Many of those providing testimony in support of Kavanaugh “asked that their names be redacted out of fear that their statements might result in personal or professional retribution or personal physical harm—or even risk the safety and well-being of their families and friends,” according to a Judiciary Committee report on the Kavanaugh confirmation.67
As difficult as Ford’s attorneys had been to work with, Ramirez’s attorneys were even less responsive, rejecting seven attempts by the committee to obtain evidence or statements regarding the allegation. Despite his own lack of cooperation with the committee, Ramirez’s attorney John Clune complained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Senate Republicans were “game-playing” with his client’s testimony.68
In a previous confirmation process, a statement like Clune’s might have stood unchallenged. But Mike Davis, Grassley’s chief counsel for nominations, had been unusually open with the media about his correspondence with the accusers’ counsel, so Clune’s own game-playing was also on display.
Within minutes of the publication of Ramirez’s story in the New Yorker, Davis had asked her attorneys for any and all evidence she had to support her allegations. Over the next forty-eight hours, he repeated the committee’s requests for testimony and evidence six times. He also asked Ramirez to speak to investigators or provide a written statement, but she refused to do so.
Even though the attorneys refused to provide evidence, Grassley’s staff still investigated. They interviewed seven witnesses, including James Roche, Ramirez’s friend and Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate at Yale, and other friends and classmates of Ramirez. They also interviewed Kavanaugh in a phone call, during which he denied that the alleged incident ever took place. In later testimony it was revealed that Roche’s relations with Kavanaugh and their third roommate were strained, and sources have suggested that Roche’s drug use was an irritant.
A similar process unfolded with the Swetnick allegations. The committee contacted Avenatti ten minutes after he publicized Swetnick’s declaration. He responded via Twitter with a list of questions for Kavanaugh. While he claimed to have evidence to back up his client’s accusations, he refused to provide any to the committee despite repeated requests. He submitted a sworn declaration by Swetnick a few days later and posted a declaration from a purported witness whom he refused to identify. He refused an interview with the committee.
Avenatti’s refusal to cooperate with the Senate backfired. On September 24—the day after he released Swetnick’s sworn affidavit—the Daily Beast ran an article headlined “Democrats to Michael Avenatti: You’re Not Helping in the Kavanaugh Fight,” which observed, “Democratic senators appeared to be low on patience with [Avenatti’s] tactic of dribbling out information before a dramatic big reveal.” Senator Coons, the article reported, urged Avenatti not to delay providing the information and witnesses he asserted would validate Swetnick’s affidavit.
Still, as John McCormack reported later, “Much of the media let Avenatti run wild, and every Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter urging Kavanaugh to withdraw following the release of Swetnick’s allegations.”69
In two interviews with committee staffers, Kavanaugh denied knowing Swetnick, whose credibility was dealt a further blow when it was reported that she had been sued for defamation, had lied about her educational background, and had engaged in “unwelcome, sexually offensive conduct” at work.
The allegations against Kavanaugh were getting stranger and stranger. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island hand-delivered to the committee staff notes from a phone message from a constituent stating that two men named “Brett and Mark” sexually