Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday referred Julie Swetnick and her attorney Michael Avenatti to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.

The big picture: In a sworn declaration last month, Swetnick accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of targeting girls at parties with spiked alcohol so that they could later be "gang raped" by groups of boys, and claimed that she was a victim of such an attack. Grassley alleges that Avenatti and Swetnick engaged in "potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional committee investigation" during the course of Kavanaugh's confirmation process.