A Kavanaugh ally, the conservative legal pundit Ed Whelan, published on Twitter an elaborate theory that Ford had mistaken Kavanaugh for another classmate. Similarly, Phyllis Berry, who worked with Hill and Thomas, suggested that if Hill had been harassed, it was by Thomas’s former chief of staff Chris Roggerson. Some conservative pundits have suggested that Ford’s accusations stem from unrequited lust for Kavanaugh, a smear some also leveled at Hill. While other women had similar stories about Kavanaugh, only Ford testified publicly, just as only Hill was called before the Senate despite the fact that other women had similar stories about Thomas....
... Even if bureau investigators are allowed to interview anyone they please, and to pursue any logical leads that arise from those interviews, the White House will have a substantial amount of control over the information the report produces. And that means the Trump administration could weaponize the bureau’s investigation against Ford—just as the 1991 FBI report was used to attack Hill’s credibility. ...
The FBI investigators were less than thorough, according to Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer in Strange Justice, their account of the Thomas confirmation battle. In an early interview with James Brudney, a Democratic staffer, Hill described in detail her now-infamous encounters with Thomas. She described Thomas saying out loud in the office “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?” and claimed that he discussed “pornographic materials depicting individuals with large penises or large breasts involved in various sex acts.” She said he discussed the porn star “Long Dong Silver” and bragged about the size of his penis.
Hill also mentioned these explicit charges in her Senate testimony—but they did not appear in the official FBI report, and that absence was used against her.
According to Mayer and Abramson, the two agents who interviewed Hill, John B. Luton and Jolene Smith Jameson, “had been ordered by the Republicans in Washington to watch her testimony,” and were “supposed to note any discrepancies between her answers to the committee and her initial interview with them.” After Hill’s Senate testimony, the two agents “could either admit that they had done an inadequate job or suggest that Hill fabricated the new details expressly for the hearings.” They chose the latter course, signing sworn affidavits that Hill hadn’t specified Thomas’s lewd remarks in her interview.
Armed with the affidavits, Republican Senator Arlen Specter, then tasked with defending Thomas, asked, “When you made your statement to the FBI, why was it that that was omitted if it were so strong in your mind and such an odd incident?”
Of course, as Mayer and Abramson later uncovered, those details were in Brudney’s notes, proving that Hill’s story had been consistent all along. The two FBI agents had simply been less thorough than a Democratic staffer.
