Politics

Report says Trump White House obstructed FBI probe into allegations against Kavanaugh

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

The Trump administration did not allow the FBI to conduct a full-scale investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh that threatened his Supreme Court confirmation, according to a new report, disputing then-President Donald Trump’s public claims at the time.

The reportreleased Tuesday by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., six years after he launched a Senate inquiry, says that the Trump administration “exercised total control over the scope of the investigation” and prevented the FBI from interviewing certain witnesses and following leads. As a result, the probe into the allegations against Kavanaugh was “flawed and incomplete” and “unworthy of reliance by the Senate,” the report says.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court in 2018 had been in jeopardy due to allegations of sexual misconduct by Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnickwhich he denied. The FBI launched a supplemental investigation into the claims after Kavanaugh and Ford testified separately before the Senate Judiciary Committee and prior to the Senate vote on his confirmation.

The FBI concluded at the time that there was “no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez.” (Swetnick’s allegation was not included in its investigation.) Kavanaugh was ultimately narrowly confirmed to the high court.

The Senate report is a damning rebuke to the Trump administration’s insistence that it gave the FBI “free rein” to conduct the investigation into the allegations. Trump said at the time that he wanted the agency “to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion.” The findings corroborate reporting over the years that Trump officials worked to hamstring the investigation.

According to the new Senate report, the Trump administration not only “kneecap[ed] FBI investigators’ ability to adequately investigate those allegations, but the lack of transparency misled the Senate and the public about the investigation’s thoroughness.”

The Senate inquiry’s yearslong review comes so belatedly because of a lack of cooperation from the executive branch, Whitehouse said. The Trump administration stonewalled the Senate investigation and, although the Biden administration was more cooperative, the senator said “investigators still struggled to secure direct answers to written questions, faced considerable delays in receiving answers to those questions, and often received incomplete answers or answers that fully ignored lines of inquiry.”

The FBI didn’t comment on the Senate report to CNNbut told the outlet that it “follows a long-standing, established process through which the scope of the investigation is limited to what is requested.”

Kavanaugh did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment sent to the Supreme Court. A spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chaired the Judiciary Committee for the confirmation, told BLN that the report “doesn’t offer any legitimate, substantive new ground.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Axios that the report is “another attempt to delegitimize the Supreme Court.” Ford’s attorneys, on the other hand, told Axios that the report confirmed the “sham effort directed by the Trump White House to silence brave victims and other witnesses who came forward and to hide the truth.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

10 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”