Secret Brett Kavanaugh Documentary Sparks New Tips Almost Immediately After Premiering at Sundance

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New tips about Brett Kavanaugh began pouring in to filmmakers almost immediately after a surprise documentary about sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court justice premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Justice, a film produced by Amy Herdy and directed by The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman, premiered at Sundance on Friday night. The premiere itself was a surprise, with the festival only revealing its addition to the lineup one day prior.

Within half-an-hour of that announcement being made, Herdy said in a post-screening Q&A that filmmakers had already begun “getting more tips,” The Washington Post reports. Those tips, she added, came from people who had contacted the FBI with allegations against Kavanaugh ahead of his Supreme Court confirmation — but the claims were never further investigated.

Now, filmmakers are looking into the new claims, and re-editing the film to make additions ahead of a wider release.

RELATED: Christine Blasey Ford Speaks Out for First Time Since Kavanaugh Testimony

Kavanaugh, 57, ignited controversy in 2018 after former President Donald Trump announced his nomination to the high court, days after Justice Anthony Kennedy said he would retire in what was widely viewed as a shocking announcement.

Shortly after his nomination, Kavanaugh — a former federal appeals court judge — was faced with allegations that he sexually assaulted a former classmate while in high school.

Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of pinning her down to a bed, groping her and trying to remove her clothes at a high school party in the early 1980s.

Ford, a research psychologist and professor at Palo Alto University, later testified under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee about allegedly being sexually assaulted by the then-Supreme Court nominee when she was 15 and he was 17.

The FBI began a week-long investigation into the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh — all of which the judge has denied — after Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona dramatically asked Senate leadership to delay the full vote on his nomination for an FBI probe.

Though Democrats have long maintained that the findings of the investigation were unclear, Republicans argued they vindicated the judge, and the Senate ultimately confirmed Kavanaugh’s nomination in a narrow 50-48 vote.

RELATED: Brett Kavanaugh’s Yale Roommate Voices Support for New Accuser Deborah Ramirez: ‘I Believe Her’

Rather than focus on Ford’s accusations, which were the centerpiece of Senate hearings about Kavanaugh, the Justice documentary focuses on an allegation by a different woman, Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University.

Ramirez went public with her allegation in a September 2018 report published by The New Yorker, telling the magazine that he exposed his penis, put it in her face, “caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away” and laughed about it during a dorm room party when they were both freshmen in the 1983 to 1984 school year. Kavanaugh also denies Ramirez’s claim.

While the FBI interviewed Ramirez, her attorneys have said the agency never contacted any of the witnesses who could have corroborated her story.

The Washington Post reports that, elsewhere in the documentary, there’s a new allegation, via a voicemail left on the FBI tip line by Max Stier, who attended Yale with both Kavanaugh and Ramirez.

Stier, who is the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, tells the FBI in the message that he witnessed another incident involving Kavanaugh “firsthand”: when the inebriated future judge allegedly pulled his pants down at a party “while a group of soccer players forced a drunk female freshman to hold his penis,” per the Post.

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In the years since Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the FBI has disclosed that it received more than 4,500 tips in relation to the 2018 inquiry, and Democrats have criticized the agency for its handling of the investigation.

As a spokesperson for the FBI’s national press office told the Post, the scope of the background investigation into Supreme Court nominees “is requested by the White House. The FBI does not have the independent authority to expand the scope of a supplemental background investigation outside the requesting agency’s parameters.”

The filmmakers behind Justice are collecting additional tips via their website, JusticeFilm.com.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

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