There were "serious omissions" in the 2018 Senate investigation of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, which reportedly found no evidence supporting claims of sexual assault against him, The Guardian reports.
The outlet obtained a 28-page report that Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time of the investigation, released alleging that Kavanaugh accuser Deborah Ramirez, a fellow Yale graduate, was likely "mistaken" when she claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a dorm party decades earlier. To back the suggestion, the report referenced another Yale student who was allegedly known for committing similar acts.
Colorado-based attorney John C. Smith Jr., a friend and former colleague of Mike Davis, then Grassley's chief counsel for nominations, was the source of this unverified claim, The Guardian reported, citing a non-redacted copy of his September 2018 email to Davis. Smith is also a member of the Federalist Society, which backed Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.
The attorney wrote that he was in a class behind Kavanaugh and Ramirez's class of 1987 and believed that she had likely incorrectly identified Kavanaugh. Smith instead suggested his classmate, Jack Maxey, who was a member of Kavanaugh's fraternity, allegedly known for exposing himself at parties, was the perpetrator. He attached an image of Maxey exposing himself in the fraternity's 1988 yearbook photo to the email as support for his theory.
The Senate committee included the claim of Ramirez's potential misidentification in its report despite Maxey — who was only described in it — not attending the university at the time of the alleged incident.
Maxey told The Guardian that he was still a senior in high school during that time and denied any allegation that he had ever exposed himself to Ramirez.
"I was not at Yale. I was a senior in high school at the time. I was not in New Haven," he said. "These people can say what they want, and there are no consequences, ever," he added.
He also said that the Republican staffers heading the investigation never contacted him. When The Guardian asked if he had ever visited Yale at the time of the alleged incident, Maxey said he had traveled there a limited number of times to see his older brother, then an older student at the university, but never attended any parties.
Maxey, a Republican activist who garnered attention in conservative spaces for sharing a portable hard drive of data from Hunter Biden's laptop with the media, was annoyed that Smith had accused him, according to the report. But he still defended Kavanaugh, comparing his behavior while he was at Yale to that of a "choir boy."
Smith sent his email to Davis six days after The New Yorker first published the article describing Ramirez's claims against Kavanaugh.
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Redacted emails also show that Smith may have sent his claim about Maxey to the FBI, which was involved in what Democrats have called a "sham" investigation of sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. The bureau released records with the names of the accuser and accused removed, showing that an individual made the exact claim to the FBI shortly after Smith had sent it to Davis.
"I submitted this same information to a staff member of the Senate judiciary committee, Mike Davis, because I know him, and he suggested I also submit it to you," the individual wrote.
These omissions suggest attempts to discredit alleged victims' claims of Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct and exclude evidence that could support their accusations, The Guardian noted, citing an upcoming documentary containing a new recording of Yale graduate Max Stier alleging that he had witnessed Kavanaugh exposing himself on a separate occasion at another university party.
The Washington Post previously reported that Stier, the CEO of a Washington nonprofit and a former staffer in Clinton's administration, wanted to share an anonymous tip with the FBI, claiming that he had seen Kavanaugh's friends push his penis into the hands of a female classmate at a party.
He was never interviewed by the Republican Senate committee's investigators despite their reportedly having been aware of his desire to submit information. The committee's final report said there was "no verifiable evidence" supporting Ramirez's accusation.
Kavanaugh has previously denied that the incident took place, Ramirez, Davis and Stier declined to comment to The Guardian, and Smith didn't respond to several of its requests.
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