Letter from Brett Kavanaugh to the Senate Judiciary Committee

Brett Kavanaugh’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee was a written defense released on September 24, 2018, amid negotiations over allegations against him and the terms of a Senate hearing. Its significance in the account lies in its place within a contested process: competing written accounts were being weighed while the scope of an investigation and the participation of witnesses remained disputed.

Identification and Release

The book records that Kavanaugh released the letter on September 24, 2018, and identifies it as a defense addressed to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The cited account establishes that function and date, but does not reproduce the letter or specify its arguments. Its role can therefore be described as a public written response, not reconstructed beyond what the record states.

The Letter in the Committee Dispute

The letter appeared as the committee and Ford’s representatives negotiated how her allegation would be handled. Ford’s team had requested an FBI investigation, but the FBI said it considered Kavanaugh’s background check closed; Republicans on the committee maintained that it had the authority and ability to investigate. Ford’s lawyers rejected an offer to interview her privately and pressed for Mark Judge to be subpoenaed to testify in person.

The committee’s staff declined to accept witness subpoenas as a condition of Ford’s testimony. Instead, it accepted written statements from Judge and P. J. Smyth: both said they did not remember the party Ford described, and both denied having seen Kavanaugh behave improperly toward women. Kavanaugh’s letter thus entered a record in which written statements and a demand for a more searching process stood alongside one another, while the committee’s choices shaped what evidence would be heard.

Documentary Contrast and Limits

Ford’s own account had first reached Dianne Feinstein in a letter that Feinstein promised to keep confidential. Kavanaugh’s letter, by contrast, was released publicly as a defense. The contrast marks two different uses of written communication in the controversy: one began as a confidential report to a senator; the other was publicly presented during the fight over the committee’s response.

The available account does not provide the letter’s wording or enough detail to assess how it answered particular allegations. What it does establish is its timing and defensive purpose, and that it formed part of a broader struggle over investigation, testimony, and which written accounts the committee would accept.