within the realm of background investigations? let s acknowledge it s different from a criminal investigation that you re directing that could take years or months with a criminal investigation the fbi is running usually. right. and the main difference between the criminal investigation and a background investigation is that a criminal investigation the fbi really would have free rein to follow leads and do what it does best. here they were literally turning away witnesses that showed up at the offices. the fbi does not normally do that. what would normally happen? because all these yale roommates and yale friends of brett kavanaugh were struggling all around the country actually to try to get their stories to the fbi. and they had sworn statements that some of them tried to physically bring to the fbi. what would the normal what would the normal resetivity of that be at an fbi office?
i do not think a reasonable prosecutor could bring this case based upon the evidence before the committee, nor do i believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance of evidence standard, end of quote. so we have thoroughly investigated judge kavanaugh s background. in addition to the prior six fbi full field background investigations with the interviews of nearly 150 people who have known judge kavanaugh his entire life. the committee thoroughly investigated every credible allegation that we received. our staff members have worked night and day over last many days and weeks tracking down virtually all leads. at the request of the undecided members, the fbi reopened judge kavanaugh s background information for another week. the fbi interviewed ten more people related to the latest credible sexual assault allegations. and the fbi confirmed what we
made of the fact he went through five or six background investigations over the years. have you ever been contacted by the fbi, and obviously in this latest investigation as well, have you been contacted? you know, i ve been scratching my head about that. i was listening to the radio, gosh, i want to say a week ago, and they were talking about brett having been interviewed by the fbi, backgrounds done on five or six occasions prior to this. and it struck me that, you know, i was his freshman year roommate and if you wanted to know how somebody behaved in college, which is a time, especially the transition from high school to college, where people are likely to have done something that expressed something that might have been a problem, that they would have contacted me. right? five or six fbi interviews. now, i started talking to friends. i said, well, is this just sloppy work or why would somebody not contact a freshman college roommate? his only freshman college
reports which the committee has reviewed on a bipartisan basis was there ever a whiff of anything related to inappropriate sexual behavior or alcohol abuse. you and seven others wrote a letter saying you don t believe this to be accurate. what exactly is inaccurate? there are two issues here. the first one i think is one we ought to discuss as a committee. if these background investigations are to be truly confidential, we cannot have people representing what is in it or not in it. in this case, the republican staffers made a generalized tweet on what they believe was contained in previous background investigations. what was not contained in there. i think we ought to discuss that. is that the ground rule now? can i come out of reading this background report currently being made and say, let me tell you what wasn t in there. that really is the standard we ought to discuss publically. secondly, i will tell you on its face that statement was an inaccurate. that not a whiff statement.
desire to do nothing more than search for the truth. just as we spent hours upon hours hearing testimony in open hearings before the public, we ve also spent hours upon hour reviewing these documents in a classified environment. allegations of sexual misconduct are serious, of sexual assault, are of a most serious nature and always have to be treated with utmost seriousness. they have been in this case. give again, this is one who has been through seven background investigations in the course of the last three decades, with over 150 people interviewed with regard to him. this is a man of outstanding character who has lived an exemplary life. he and his family have been subjected to a lot of questioning, a lot of embarrassment, a lot of humiliation in recent weeks. that has been a difficult part of this process for him. but in the process of doing