then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, Sept. 27, 2018.ERIN SCHAFF/The New York Times News Service
As the FBI began looking into allegations of sexual assault against then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year, a Democratic senator wrote to the director of the FBI saying he had “information relevant” to the inquiry, but the bureau apparently failed to follow up.
The letter, sent early last October by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., to Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, has come to light after a book by two New York Times reporters surfaced a new allegation of sexual impropriety by Kavanaugh. The events have reopened the bitter partisan debate over the confirmation of Kavanaugh, just as he is coming up on his anniversary on the Supreme Court.
In the letter, Coons told Wray that several people had come to him with information about the future justice. In particular, he asked Wray for “appropriate follow-up” with a former Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s, who had information that might have buttressed a claim by another classmate, Deborah Ramirez, that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken dormitory party in 1983, their freshman year.
In a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times, the classmate’s name is redacted, but a spokesman for Coons, Sean Coit, confirmed that the classmate was Max Stier, who runs the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington nonprofit. Stier was first identified in a forthcoming book about the confirmation.
“I cannot speak to the relevance or veracity of the information that many of these individuals seek to provide, and I have encouraged them to use the FBI tip portal or contact a regional FBI field office,” Coons wrote, adding, “However, there is one individual whom I would like to specifically refer to you for appropriate follow-up.”
The FBI acknowledged receiving the letter from Coons, Coit said. The two top senators on the Judiciary Committee at the time – Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and the top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California – were copied on the letter.
The new book about Kavanaugh and his confirmation process by the two Times reporters says that Stier saw Kavanaugh expose himself to another female student at a different alcohol-soaked party, where friends pushed his penis into the woman’s hand. Stier reported the incident to the FBI and to senators, according to an excerpt published in Sunday editions of The Times.
The authors reported that the female student declined to be interviewed, and that friends said she did not recall the episode. But the account echoes the one Ramirez described.
News of Stier’s story has prompted calls from some Democrats for a reopening of the Kavanaugh inquiry.
“There should certainly be a full, fair investigation, as was never done at the time,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “It was a sham, as we said then, and there should be a full inquiry now.”
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.