F.B.I. to End Kavanaugh Inquiry as Soon as Wednesday, With Vote Coming This Week

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders pressed on Tuesday to wrap up the confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, seizing on word from the F.B.I. that it would complete its investigation into allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct as early as Wednesday.

“We’ll have an F.B.I. report this week, and we’ll have a vote this week,” an emphatic Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, told reporters after the Republicans’ weekly policy luncheon.

But Mr. McConnell’s promise was as much about bluffing as it was about confidence, giving the nomination an air of inevitability even as five undecided senators will determine Judge Kavanaugh’s fate. Those five — the Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, and the Democrats Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — are refusing to tip their hands.

The push for a quick vote on Judge Kavanaugh came as the Senate and the White House waited for the F.B.I. to finish its work. President Trump, who has made stocking the federal judiciary with committed conservatives like Judge Kavanaugh a signature of his White House tenure, expressed qualified optimism on Tuesday, noting that this was the seventh time the nominee had undergone a background check.

“I think that Judge Kavanaugh is doing pretty well — it seems to me — over the last 24 hours,” Mr. Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. “A lot is going to depend on what comes back from the F.B.I., in terms of their additional — No. 7 — investigation.”

The president also expressed concern for men, especially young men, who he said face a “very scary situation” when accused of sexual misconduct. “It’s a very scary time for young men in America, when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of,” he said.

Ms. Ramirez, who did not testify, has accused Judge Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her during a drunken dormitory party at Yale. She spent more than two hours on Sunday with F.B.I. investigators, her lawyer, John Clune, said on Twitter on Tuesday.

But while Mr. Clune wrote that “the agents were clearly motivated to investigate the matter in any way they were permitted,” he expressed doubts about whether they would pursue more than 20 additional witnesses that Ms. Ramirez identified. He said he and his client “have great concern that the FBI is not conducting — or not being permitted to conduct — a serious investigation.”

In addition, five former Yale classmates of Judge Kavanaugh and Ms. Ramirez said in interviews with The New York Times that they have tried to offer information to the F.B.I., without success.

One of them, Kerry Berchem, a classmate of Judge Kavanaugh, has a text stream with a close Kavanaugh friend that she believes calls into question “whether Brett Kavanaugh anticipated, perhaps as early as July, the allegations made by Debbie Ramirez, which became public on Sept. 23.” Another, Kathleen Charlton, said she had information that Judge Kavanaugh was contacting former Yale classmates before The New Yorker’s publication of an article about Ms. Ramirez to persuade them to deny it.

“Since contacting my senator’s office on Sunday morning and speaking to the FBI special agent in charge for my state — who assured me that I would hear back shortly — I have not heard anything,” Ms. Charlton wrote in an email. “I contacted the state office twice on Monday and followed up with the senator’s staff on multiple occasions. More than 72 hours have passed and the FBI has yet to take my statement.”

A third classmate, Mark Krasberg, provided a timeline indicating that he has unsuccessfully been trying to get his “important evidence regarding the Debbie Ramirez investigation” into the right hands since Sept. 28 despite “good-faith attempts.”

Once the bureau finishes its work, the results of its interviews will be shared with the Senate. Already, there is disagreement about whether and how to make them public. While Mr. McConnell said Tuesday that “only senators will be able to look at” the results, other Republicans — including Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican — said that they would like to see the results made public in some form.

“People are not going to be satisfied until some public statement about what the F.B.I. supplemental background investigation shows,” Mr. Cornyn said. He and other Republicans expressed concerns about leaks.

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, told reporters, “I’m afraid if somehow or another we don’t make it public, each side will be very selective in what they share with y’all, even though it’s supposed to be confidential.”

While the F.B.I. is primarily examining allegations from Dr. Blasey and Ms. Ramirez, a third accuser, Julie Swetnick, has said Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge both attended parties in high school where women were gang raped. She accused the men of being severely drunk and said she saw Judge Kavanaugh be physically aggressive toward women. Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge have forcefully denied all the allegations.

Mr. Judge’s lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, said in a statement Tuesday: “Mr. Judge completed his F.B.I. interview. We are not commenting on the questions the F.B.I. asked Mr. Judge.”

An author, filmmaker and journalist who has written for conservative publications, Mr. Judge was the subject of numerous questions during last week’s testimony of Dr. Blasey and Judge Kavanaugh.

Dr. Blasey said that before the attack, she was pushed into an upstairs bedroom by either Judge Kavanaugh or Mr. Judge, and that one of them turned up the music so that others would not hear. Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge “were drunkenly laughing during the attack,” she testified.

“They seemed to be having a very good time,” she said, adding: “Mark seemed ambivalent, at times urging Brett on and at times telling him to stop. A couple of times I made eye contact with Mark and thought he might try to help me, but he did not.”

Mr. Judge has disputed her account. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said: “I do not recall the events described by Dr. Ford in her testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today. I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.”

In an earlier interview with The Times before Dr. Blasey’s name was publicly known, Mr. Judge said he never saw an encounter like the one she alleged.

“I never saw anything like that,” he said in the interview. “The way it was described is even bizarre, about turning up the music and all this other stuff. It’s no situation I recall ever being in.”