Michael Bromwich, founder and managing principal of The Bromwich Group. Oct. 18, 2018. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ ALM

Michael Bromwich has counseled high-profile clients in difficult political situations, served as compliance monitor in national cases and investigated police and FBI misconduct. But he says nothing during his more than 30 years in the law compared to one intense week on the legal team representing the woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault as he was poised to join the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I didn't fully realize the incredible level of interest there was nationwide in this until I was in the middle of it, how much this resonated with so many people, particularly but not exclusively women," Bromwich told The National Law Journal in a wide-ranging interview about his career.

Bromwich, working with Debra Katz and Lisa Banks of Washington's Katz, Marshall & Banks, represented Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, the California research psychologist who alleged Kavanaugh, then a high school student, sexually assaulted her in the 1980s at a house party in Maryland.

Bromwich says he accelerated his planned departure from the Washington firm Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber when he joined Ford's legal team shortly before Ford, and Kavanaugh, would testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27. The hearing captivated the nation, as Ford recounted the alleged attack and Kavanaugh, denying the claims, angrily denounced the allegations as part of an "orchestrated" political hit to derail his confirmation. He was confirmed 50-48.

Bromwich says he and Robbins Russell, where he was senior counsel, had reached a mutual agreement in the summer to end their affiliation. The firm had some concern that Bromwich had spent more time on consulting matters than expected, he said, and he said the firm did not provide the platform he thought was needed to support working on internal investigations. "You really need a corporate client base to do that—that's frequently the springboard for getting internal investigations work," he says.

Bromwich says he is speaking with law firms in hopes of continuing his split professional existence: 50 percent with his consulting firm, The Bromwich Group, and 50 percent legal work at a firm where he can conduct internal investigations and other corporate legal matters.

"The way it's been divided is I do independent monitorships and law enforcement consulting on the consulting firm side, and I do everything else on the law firm side," Bromwich says. "So that includes individual and corporate representations in criminal and regulatory matters. It includes internal investigations, which is in a way my first love and something that I spent most of my time on at Fried Frank [Harris, Shriver & Jacobson] for 11 years from 1999 to 2010."

He spoke recently with the NLJ, and what follows are highlights from that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

NLJ: Did you know Ford's lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, before you joined them?

Bromwich: I didn't. I talked with them on the phone and I came to their office Friday afternoon before the hearing, and we worked incredibly closely together over the course of the next week. I thought they were terrific. We sort of analyzed issues in very similar ways and it was a great relationship. I would happily work with them again.

Katz and Banks are civil rights and employment discrimination lawyers. What did you see as your role?

I think that I have a lot of experience with Congress, mostly as a witness. I've testified 40 times. Some of the members on the Senate Judiciary Committee go back to when I was inspector general at [the Department of] Justice. I viewed my role as providing experience dealing with the Hill, dealing with high-pressure situations, dealing with the potential need to be aggressive on behalf of our client. So almost immediately I was involved in the back-and-forth with [Judiciary Chairman Charles] Grassley's staff and other staffs.

What was the most difficult part of the experience?

The intensity and dealing with a client where this is not her world. I stand in awe of her personal bravery and courage in coming forward because she knew it wasn't her world, and yet in the end she was willing to do what she felt, and this is a phrase that she uses frequently, her civic duty required her to do—to step forward and tell her story as best she recalled it.

Christine Blasey Ford, center, is assisted by her attorneys Debra Katz, left, and Michael Bromwich before testifying during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2018. (Photo: Win McNamee/Pool via Bloomberg)

Senate Republicans criticized Ford's lawyers for, what they claimed, the alleged failure to tell Ford that their investigators would go to California to interview her.

What she was willing to do was to meet with the senators if they wanted to come out to California. She was not willing to deal with the staff; she wanted to tell the members her story. I'm not aware of any failure to communicate options to her.

Senate Republicans also claimed there was a coordinated effort between Ford's legal team and Senate Democrats to level the sexual misconduct allegations at the last minute in a public hearing.

There was no coordinated effort of any kind. This was a decision ultimately that was Dr. Ford's to make. She made the decision. Nobody could have made her go out there and testify in the way that she did. It was a deeply personal and difficult decision and she made it. She and only she made it.

You and your colleagues sought and got a supplemental FBI investigation of the sexual misconduct accusations. Why are you and others critical of the investigation?

I thought imposing a week limit on it was crazy. You never impose that kind of a limitation on an investigation when you don't know what's out there.

They never gave us the name of the agent in charge of the investigation, which I found unbelievable. If somebody is running a legitimate investigation, and you have people on the outside—and we should certainly have been counted among them—who may be able to supply leads, names of people to be interviewed, evidence to be collected, why not give us that person's name?

The other thing that was a tell, almost immediately, is that this was done by the security division. That's not how you do high-profile, real investigations. You should have brought in some superstar either from counterintelligence or criminal investigations, the people who really do the critical important investigative work.

As more reports kept coming out about people wanting to be interviewed who weren't being interviewed and the fact that we had not been contacted, and we heard that there was no intention to interview Kavanaugh either, it caused me to conclude that this was a fake investigation. They also were done by Tuesday night. They didn't even take a week.

Senate leaders have kept the supplemental FBI report confidential. Should it be made public?

Absolutely. I don't know what the history is of releasing background investigations, but I think that piece of it, the public's need to know outweighs whatever privacy interest of the people whose information would be disclosed. I think if the results were released, it would confirm my strongly held view that this was not a real investigation, and that the FBI was used.

If the Democrats gain control of the House in the midterm elections, they may reopen the Kavanaugh investigation as well as investigate the FBI investigation. Should that happen?

It would be a valid oversight matter to look into how and why the FBI did what it did, and really as a way of trying to avoid these same kinds of mistakes in the future.

Are you still in touch with Ford?

Yes. She's doing OK. It has been really, really hard. She's not a public person so this was even more difficult for her than it would have been for most people and it would have been horribly difficult for most people. She really would like nothing more than to re-immerse herself in her life and that's not possible right now. I hope it will be possible soon.

 

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