Kavanaugh on defensive amid new allegations
WASHINGTON • Denouncing his accusers for launching “smears, pure and simple,” Brett Kavanaugh said Monday he’ll continue fighting for Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court, even as Republicans battled to prevent a second woman’s assertion of a long-ago sexual assault from derailing his nomination.
“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from the process,” Kavanaugh wrote in a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The co-ordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out.” Hours earlier, President Donald Trump led the defence of his embattled nominee against the latest allegation of sexual misconduct, calling the accusations against Kavanaugh “totally political.”
The combative tone by Kavanaugh and Trump came a day after a second allegation emerged. That accusation, in a report by The New Yorker magazine, pushed the White House and Senate Republicans onto the defensive and fuelled calls from Democrats for further investigation.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called for the “immediate postponement” of any further action on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Trump, at the United Nations for his second General Assembly meeting, called the allegations unfair and unsubstantiated, made by accusers who come “out of the woodwork.” He also questioned the political motivations of the attorneys representing the women, saying “you should look into the lawyers doing the representation.” On Kavanaugh, Trump stressed: “I am with him all the way.”
The new accusation landed late Sunday in a report from The New Yorker, just a few hours after negotiators had reached an agreement to hold an extraordinary public hearing Thursday for Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who accuses him of sexually assaulting her at a party when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh denies the accusation. The second claim against Kavanaugh dates to the 198384 academic year, which was his first at Yale University. Deborah Ramirez described the incident after being contacted by The New Yorker magazine. She recalled that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they would investigate Ramirez’s accusation.
The New Yorker said the allegation came to the attention of Democratic senators through a civil rights lawyer.