Democrat senators' smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh falls flat

Democrat Senators are trying to resurrect allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh by blaming the FBI. But it's being pointed out that the Senate had access to the full veracity of information the agency had at the time, as well.

Senate Democrats have accused the FBI of ignoring "tips" on Kavanaugh during the justice's contentious Supreme Court nomination hearings in 2018, citing over 4,500 tips that were received by the federal law enforcement agency that did not lead to further action by investigators at the time.

The initial New York Times piece says there's a rehashing from Senate Democrats about the veracity of effectiveness in their background investigation into Kavanaugh. In a June 30 letter response from the FBI, the likes of Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Coons finally got a response. It was the first of its kind, explained assistant director Jill C. Tyson. Whitehouse alleged that this response established that the FBI failed by running a "fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith."

What the National Review intends to refute is the fact that "all 100 US senators" had access to the totality of the FBI's received tips. But also that a majority of those leads in questions weren't "compelling" at all.

Mike Davis was chief counsel at the Senate Judiciary committee at the time and he's able to dispute Whitehouse's assertions.

"They printed out the entire tip-line summary. Every senator had full access to read those things if they wanted to. If there was anything that caught their attention, they could have flagged it for further investigation."

Per the Google results, it's indeed a renewed media campaign against Kavanaugh.

Not to mention that both parties agreed to making the investigation limited in scope from the get-go.

Despite the New York Times characterization of meddling by the Trump White House about the scope of the investigation, CNN at the time reported Flake's remarks about the scope of the investigation being amicably limited: "The scope being limited to current, credible allegations. And we didn't want to throw something open for allegations to come out like the Rhode Island boat thing that was out and then retracted. Or some of the more outlandish ones out there. We checked with the DOJ and they assured us this was within the timeframe they could do it."

Moreover, CNN said the FBI report to Congress included information that came into the FBI tip line. It was on Congress to suss out anything else that caught their eye. In closing National Review mentions how Kate Kelly was the author of the new New York Times piece and she and Robin Pogrebin previously wrote a book about Kavanaugh. That included a new unsubstantiated allegation that didn't really go anywhere—something that Kate Kelly finds good company with Michael Avenatti in pursuing. As reported by MSNBC at the time, they regretted how Julie Swetnick's claims against Brett Kavanaugh caused the investigation to fall apart.