Kavanaugh’s accuser comes forward
Supreme Court nominee denies 30-year-old sexual assault allegations
WASHINGTON— The woman who has accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago has come forward, saying that during a high school party a drunken Kavanaugh pinned her on a bed, groped her and covered her mouth to keep her from screaming. “I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” the woman, Christine Blasey Ford, a 51-year-old research psychol- ogist at Palo Alto University in Northern California, said in an interview with the Washington Post. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Kavanaugh, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, has flatly denied the accusations in statements issued through the White House. On Friday, as word of the accusations began to circulate, but his accuser’s identity was not publicly known, the White House released a letter from 65 women who said they knew Kavanaugh in high school and could attest to his character.
The Post’s article included an interview with Ford’s husband and her lawyer, Debra Katz, and described a therapist’s notes from 2012 in which Ford told of the attack.
Ford’s account has also been detailed in a confidential letter that Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has shared with the FBI.
On Sunday, leading Democrats called for the Senate to put a hold on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., Feinstein and other Democratic senators quickly called for that vote to be set aside and for the FBI to in- vestigate the allegations.
“From the outset, I have believed these allegations were extremely serious and bear heavily on Judge Kavanaugh’s character,” Feinstein said in a statement. “I support Mrs. Ford’s decision to share her story, and now that she has, it is in the hands of the FBI to conduct an investigation. This should happen before the Senate moves forward on this nominee.”
Schumer, too, called on the committee chairman, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, to put off the vote. The New York Times published an account of the letter Friday.
In the interview, Ford said that the lasting trauma from the attack had “derailed me substantially for four or five years,” and had caused anxiety for years after that.
Kavanaugh, in his statement released last week, said: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.” Until now, Kavanaugh has been widely viewed as on a glide path toward confirmation, and it is unclear whether Ford’s account will change that.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up the confirmation Thursday.