Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation entered the Kavanaugh controversy as both a potential source of impartial fact-finding and a limited participant in a politically contested process. Its role changed as the allegation moved from a confidential letter to public scrutiny and a Senate hearing: the Bureau initially declined to reopen a closed background check, later received the letter through a referral from Dianne Feinstein, and ultimately conducted a supplemental inquiry. That inquiry reported no corroboration, but did not interview either Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh, leaving the central allegation unresolved by the investigation described in the book.

The Initial Request and Refusal

Ford’s team sought an FBI investigation so that impartial law-enforcement officials could examine what had happened roughly three decades earlier. The request arose while the terms of Ford’s possible appearance before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary were still being negotiated. The FBI refused to get involved, saying that Kavanaugh’s background check was closed. Republican members of the committee, meanwhile, maintained that the committee itself had both the authority and the ability to investigate.

The difference was consequential: Ford’s side was asking for an independent inquiry, while the committee’s Republicans argued that their own process could address the allegation. The available account does not describe the FBI as deciding whether the allegation was true at this stage. Its stated reason for declining was procedural—the background check had closed—not a finding about Ford’s account. With no agreed investigative route, the question of who would examine the allegation became part of the wider negotiation over the hearing.

The Letter Enters the Background File

The Bureau’s role shifted after The Intercept reported that Democrats on the committee were seeking a letter Dianne Feinstein had received about Kavanaugh. The article described the letter as concerning an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman in high school, but the allegation remained vague in public. The next day, Feinstein announced that she had sent the letter to law enforcement for review. The FBI then forwarded it to the White House for Kavanaugh’s background file.

The referral had an immediate public consequence: Kavanaugh issued a denial in response to an accusation that had not yet been fully identified. For Ford, the sequence threatened to take control of the disclosure away from her. After spending more than a week trying to reconcile herself to remaining silent, she feared that her identity might soon be exposed without her consent. She decided instead to speak to a reporter herself. The Bureau’s handling of the letter did not itself make Ford’s identity public in the account, but its transmission helped move the allegation into the official and political process surrounding Kavanaugh’s nomination.

A Supplemental Inquiry Amid Procedural Dispute

The FBI’s eventual supplemental investigation took place after the initial refusal and amid continuing disagreement about the hearing. Ford’s team had requested an investigation earlier, while the committee’s Republican members had said they could investigate the matter themselves. The book presents these competing positions as part of an improvised process: the hearing’s timing, format, and participation were still being negotiated, rather than governed by an agreed protocol for allegations of sexual harassment or assault against a nominee.

The supplemental inquiry was sharply bounded. The FBI interviewed Mark Judge, P. J. Smyth, Leland Keyser, and an attorney for one of the witnesses. It did not interview Ford or Kavanaugh. The book reports that the agency’s inquiry found no corroboration of Ford’s allegation; it also found no corroboration of Deborah Ramirez’s allegation. The result therefore describes what the inquiry did and did not establish. It does not amount to a resolution of what happened decades earlier, particularly when neither the accuser nor the nominee was interviewed.

Scope, Result, and Significance

The investigation’s limits matter alongside its conclusion. The phrase no corroboration records the outcome of a narrowly defined inquiry, not a determination that the events alleged did or did not occur. The interviews listed in the account concerned other people connected to the allegations, while Ford and Kavanaugh were absent from the FBI’s interview process. The book emphasizes that questions about the high-school encounter remained unsettled after the investigation.

That unresolved status shaped the significance of the Bureau’s role. Its involvement offered the appearance of an external investigative channel, yet its first response was to decline the request because the background check was closed; when it later investigated, the inquiry did not include interviews with the two principal parties. The report’s finding could therefore be cited as an official result while leaving the underlying dispute open. In the narrative, the FBI is not presented as supplying a final account of the past, but as an institution whose limited investigation became one element in the Senate’s consequential decision-making process.