Grassley rejects Judiciary Dems' demands for FBI investigation into Kavanaugh allegation, chastises for leaks
by Melissa Quinn
| September 19, 2018 06:32 PM
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chided the panel’s 10 Democrats for calling on him to demand the FBI investigate a sexual assault allegation involving Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Their request “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding†of the bureau’s background investigation process, he said.
“We have no power to commandeer an Executive Branch agency into conducting our due diligence," Grassley wrote in a letter to the committee’s Democrats on Wednesday. "The job of assessing and investigating a nominee's qualifications in order to decide whether to consent to the nomination is ours, and ours alone."
The Democratic senators had urged Grassley in a letter Tuesday to join them in pushing for an FBI investigation into the allegation of sexual assault lodged against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University in California.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/grassley-rejects-judiciary-dems-demands-for-fbi-investigation-into-kavanaugh-allegation-chastises-for-leaks