The FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh seems to have been highly circumscribed, with many potential witnesses going uninterviewed. On Wednesday, NBC News reported that more than 40 witnesses who wanted to talk to the FBI weren’t able to.
The same day, The New Yorker, which broke the story of Deborah Ramirez’s allegation that Kavanaugh at a Yale party pushed his genitals into her face which led to non-consensual touching, also recorded that they were in contact with witnesses that the FBI had not responded to. “Several people interested in speaking to the F.B.I. expressed exasperation in interviews with The New Yorker at what they perceived to be a lack of interest in their accounts,” the magazine noted.
Ramirez herself felt that a disservice was done to her story by the agency’s unwillingness to talk to potentially corroborating witnesses. “I am very alarmed, first, that I was denied an FBI investigation for five days, and then, when one was granted, that it was given on a short timeline and that the people who were key to corroborating my story have not been contacted,” Ramirez told The New Yorker. “I feel like I’m being silenced.”
Among those who tried to talk to the FBI and failed was Kenneth G. Appold, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, who claims he heard about Kavanaugh’s alleged behavior toward Ramirez within a day of it happening.
As The New Yorker notes, Appold was not alone:
In addition to Appold, several other former Yale classmates said that they had reached out to the F.B.I. about Kavanaugh but had not received a response. Stephen Kantrowitz, a former Yale classmate, said in a text message that, “No one who lived in Lawrance Hall (so far as I know) has been contacted by the FBI What a charade.”