New Kavanaugh allegations don’t deter Republicans
Rapes occurred at parties, 3rd woman says
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of the most lurid sexual misconduct yet Wednesday as Senate Republicans pressed ahead with plans to hold a Thursday hearing that would let the GOP push him toward confirmation as early as next week. Christine Blasey Ford will testify at the hearing that a sexual assault in 1982 by Kavanaugh “drastically altered my life” and that she was too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone about it at the time, according to a prepared statement. Kavanaugh has strongly denied all misconduct allegations against him. Separately, a new accuser, Julie Swetnick, said Wednesday that Kavanaugh took part in efforts during high school to get girls intoxicated so that a group of boys could have sex with them. Kavanaugh rejected the latest claim Wednesday as “ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone.”
The new allegation and other sexual misconduct claims about Kavanaugh are “all false to me,” President Donald Trump told reporters in New York, while adding he could be persuaded otherwise depending on the Senate testimony by Ford on Thursday.
The Judiciary panel has scheduled a vote for Friday on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been preparing a weekend session of the full chamber to run the procedural clock out, an unusual move reflecting the high stakes and the desire to let GOP senators campaign on Kavanaugh’s confirmation in the November election.
Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican who may be one of the critical votes on confirmation, said on the Senate floor Wednesday, “I don’t believe that Dr. Ford is part of some vast conspiracy from start to finish to smear Judge Kavanaugh.” He added, “I do not believe that Judge Kavanaugh is some kind of serial sexual predator.”
As with the allegations by two previous accusers, the latest incidents are alleged to have occurred decades ago. In a sworn declaration, Swetnick of Washington, D.C., said she witnessed Kavanaugh “consistently engage in excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women in the early 1980s.” Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, provided the declaration to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Swetnick said she witnessed efforts by Kavanaugh, his friend Mark Judge and others “to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”
“I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room,” Swetnick said in the affidavit. “These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh,” she added. Judge was a high school classmate of Kavanaugh. Swetnick said that she was a victim of a group attack in the early 1980s and that Kavanaugh and Judge had been present, though she did not say whether they had sex with her. “I believe I was drugged using Quaaludes or something similar placed in what I was drinking,” she said in the statement. Kavanaugh rejected the latest claim Wednesday in a statement released by the White House, saying, “I don’t know who this is and this never happened.” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat on the panel, said Swetnick’s allegations are “absolutely breathtaking — a gut punch” and added, “If my Republican colleagues have any sense of morality, they will refuse to move forward with Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.” Thursday’s hearing will be centred on a claim by Ford, a California psychology professor, that during a house party in high school, she was pushed into a bedroom and onto a bed and that Kavanaugh got on top of her.
“Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes,” her statement said. In prepared testimony to the Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh said he “categorically and unequivocally” denied Ford’s allegations. “I have never done that to her or to anyone. I am innocent of this charge.” Kavanaugh called other allegations against him “lastminute smears” and “grotesque and obvious character assassination.” “Over the past few days, other false and uncorroborated accusations have been aired,” Kavanaugh said in the statement. He said that in high school he drank beer with his friends and “sometimes I had too many. In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now.” But he added, “What I’ve been accused of is far more serious than juvenile misbehaviour. I never did anything remotely resembling what Dr. Ford describes.”
(EFFORTS) TO CAUSE GIRLS TO BECOME INEBRIATED AND DISORIENTED.