“I really wish you could see this,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said to reporters. “Let me say that again: I really wish you could read this report. There are things in here that really make me angry.” 

That was in 2018, and Senator Kennedy was talking to reporters after leaving the secure area where senators have reviewed the FBI’s findings on their background check of Brett Kavanaugh. “If you think this is a search for the truth,” he said you “ought to put down the bong. It’s about gamesmanship and political advantage.”

So what is in the Kavanaugh FBI report? Now that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are leading the FBI, we may hope to find out. If that happens many more people besides Senator Kennedy are going to be angry.

Over the past several years I have written many investigative articles about the 2018 Kavanaugh hearing. The reason I have persisted, despite criticism (although, to be fair, I have also been bolstered by praise), is that I remain hopeful that the full truth of what happened at that dark time will come out. 

Recently my persistence bore fruit, when New York Times reporter David Enrich apologized to me for his Kavanaugh coverage. In 2018 Enrich had been one of the reporters covering a woman named Christine Blasey Ford who had accused Brett of sexually assaulting her and me of standing by and watching in 1982 when we were all in high school. I realize that, as my critics say, I have written about this topic a lot—including in my book The Devil’s Triangle. What these critics might soon understand is that investigative reporting can take years to uncover the full truth. When it finally does, that truth can be shocking.

If Patel and Bongino ever do see the full Kavanaugh FBI files, I believe they will be shocked. I also believe the file contains information showing that the Kavanaugh hit was a deep state operation that involved criminal activity like extortion and witness tampering, and that those behind it still have not, to this day, been named. I believe their names are in the FBI report—and that this is why Senator Kennedy was so angry in 2018.

This would also explain the apology David Enrich of the New York Times made to me a few weeks ago. These were his exact words: “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my role in the Kavanaugh coverage, and I would be happy to talk to you about it at some point. For now, I will just say that I have learned some lessons and would probably do certain things differently next time.” Then he added this: “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to go thru [sic] that.”

Read those words again carefully. Liberal reporters never apologize—ever. For that to have happened, something truly egregious had to have happened. So what was it? 

For the past several weeks I have been talking to people from high school days about a woman named Monica McLean. McLean, a former FBI agent, had quite a splashy run in the news in 2018. She was Christine Blasey Ford’s best friend going back to grade school. McLean appeared in several major stories when that news broke, and she was by Blasey Ford’s side at the Kavanaugh hearing. Indeed, McLean was attached to Ford’s hip for the duration of the hearings.

She was also anonymous, until an ex-boyfriend of Ford’s went public and claimed that Ford had helped McLean prepare for her FBI polygraph test. In the declaration, the man who says he dated Ford in the mid-90s wrote that he “witnessed Dr. Ford help Monica McLean prepare for a polygraph examination.” McLean was outraged. “I have never had anyone assist me with the preparation of any polygraph. Ever. Not my entry polygraph, not my 5-year reinvestigation polygraphs. Never. I am extremely angry he would make this up,” she told CNN.

McLean was also accused of witness tampering when woman named Leland Keyser, who Ford claimed had been at the party where she was assaulted, denied the entire story. McLean strongly denied that charge.  Based on an unidentified source, The Wall Street Journal reported that “The FBI, which sent a report Thursday about its additional background probe on Kavanaugh, later provided the White House and Senate with additional material that included text messages from McLean to Keyser…” 

McLean’s lawyer David Laufman issued a statement: “Any notion or claim that Ms. McLean pressured Leland Keyser to alter Ms. Keyser’s account of what she recalled concerning the alleged incident between Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh is absolutely false.”

Shortly after Kavanaugh was confirmed, McLean cut off all ties with Ford and went silent. The people I have spoken to over the last few months who all knew Ford and McLean expressed shock that McLean will no longer speak to Ford. In her “memoir” One Way Back, Blasey Ford refers to McLean as “Tory” and briefly notes that Tory will not return her messages:

My friendship with Tory was on a deeper level and had continued throughout the decades since high school. She and I had gone through so much together—apartments, boyfriends, graduate schools—and nothing had rattled our bond. Suddenly she stopped responding to my calls and texts. It’s surreal to have a person drop out of your life so quickly. An outside force had come and pummeled us like a tsunami, and instead of clinging to me for safety, she had been forced to let go of me to save herself.

This doesn’t make any sense. Monica McLean was front and center during the Kavanugh hearings. She’s a former FBI agent. McLean was admitted to the California Bar in 1992. She was a 24-year employee of the Department of Justice and FBI from 1992 to 2016. According to public records McLean worked in both Los Angeles, Calif. and New York, N.Y. In a 2000 Los Angeles FBI declaration, McLean describes herself as a special agent of the FBI, and associate division counsel in the Los Angeles Division Legal Unit. Sometime between 2000 and 2003, McLean transferred to the Southern District of New York’s (SDNY) FBI New York Field Office. According to her now-erased LinkedIn profile, McLean retired from the FBI in 2016. She listed Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, as her home address. 

During her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018, Ford stated that she was with “beach friends” at Rehoboth Beach when she prepared her letter to Dianne Feinstein accusing Kavanaugh of assault. It’s also noteworthy that McLean’s lawyer was David Laufman, a quintessential deep state operative. Laufman is the former Justice Department lawyer who interviewed Hillary Clinton during the investigation into her private email server. That interview with Clinton was conducted alongside former FBI agent Peter Strzok during the 2016 presidential election. Strzok was fired in 2018 after texts emerged from 2016 between him and his FBI coworker and paramour, Lisa Page. Those texts expressed anti-Trump bias and hinted at potential operations to harm his candidacy, including Strzok’s assertion that the FBI would “stop” Trump from being elected. In 2022, after the questionable FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Laufman spent a lot of time on Twitter and cable news calling for Trump’s head.

When Monica McLean’s name came out, the conservative media took notice.

Chris Menahan of the website Information Liberation quoted The Federalist’s chief executive, Sean Davis, tweeting: 

The lawyer for Christine Blasey Ford’s “beach friend”—the one who worked for the FBI in the office of former Schumer staffer Preet Bharara–just so happens to be the FBI official who oversaw the Clinton e-mail and Trump Russia probes. What a coincidence!

Mike Davis quipped:

David Laufman also represented Monica McLean, who allegedly pressured Leland Keyser to change her statement and falsely corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s (bogus) allegations against Kavanaugh. David Laufman seems to pop up like Forrest Gump in this ongoing Democrat lawfare.

Right after the FBI probe into Kavanaugh and me was announced, FBI agent and leftist Frank Figliuzzi appeared on MSNBC with host Brian Williams. Figliuzzi was thrilled about us getting nailed by the bureau. “This is where the FBI shines when it is allowed to,” he said. “Pagers have gone off, text messages are being sent, calls are being made. Everybody has been on standby. If you are in the Baltimore division that covers Georgetown Prep where Kavanaugh went to high school, if you are in the New Haven, Connecticut division that covers Yale, if you are in California where some of the accusers and survivors are, you are in action…tonight.”

The conservative blogger Pastor Ward Clinton summed things up this way on his blog: 

Sure looks like Blasey Ford spent four days visiting her life-long friend and former roommate, Monica McLean. The same Monica McLean who, until 2016, had been an FBI special agent, and in that capacity, a former New York field office spokesperson, and DOJ/FBI Public Information Officer under Preet Bharara, who is no fan of President Trump.

Gee, I wonder if Ms. McLean was involved in this process? Does the appearance of FBI insider and Deputy FBI Director to Andrew McCabe, Michael Bromwich, begin to make more sense?…

Do the loud and overwhelming requests by political allies for FBI intervention, take on a different meaning or make more sense, now?

Standing back and taking a look at the bigger, BIG PICTURE….. could it be that Mrs. McLean and her team of ideological compatriots within the DOJ and FBI, who have massive axes to grind against the current Trump administration, are behind this entire endeavor?

Clinton went on:

Considering all of the embattled, angry, institutional officials (former and current); and considering the recently fired DOJ and FBI officials; and considering the officials currently under investigation; and considering the declassification requests which will likely lead to the exposure of even more corruption…. Could it be that these elements wanted to do something, anything to get back at the executive branch; and possibly change the tide?

If so, and I think the likelihood is pretty good, doesn’t everything known just easily reconcile if you think of Ms. Blasey-Ford as a tool for those ideologues? If Ms Monica Lee McLean and her allies wanted to strike, she couldn’t be the visible face of the confrontation because she was retired FBI. It would be too obvious. She would need a patsy; a friend who could deploy the hit on her/their behalf. It would need to be someone she could shape, easily manage and guide etc. Someone who could be trusted, and at the same time would be trusting of them. It is quite likely Ms. McLean selected/recruited her life-long best friend, Ms. Blasey-Ford.

All of that from Clinton is speculation, but it’s intelligent speculation. FBI Director Patel needs to open up the Kavanaugh file. It’s time to answer these questions. For some reason “Tory” has cut off all ties with Blasey Ford. I’d like to know why.

I have friends who know McLean personally and, while preparing this article, I sent several of them questions for her and asked them to pass them along. If she responds, I will update accordingly.