Nominee Kavanaugh’s support looks shaky

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK: President Donald Trump yesterday said he could withdraw his support for Brett Kavanaugh depending on the testimony in a highprofile hearing today into multiple accusations of sexual misconduct against the Supreme Court nominee.

Trump defended Kavanaugh, now a federal appeals court judge, at a New York news conference, but the president’s comments injected another note of uncertainty into Kavanaugh’s already troubled bid for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.

‘‘You know, believe it or not, I’m going to see what’s said’’ at the hearing, Trump said.

Blasey Ford will tell the committee a ‘‘visibly drunk’’ Kavanaugh and a friend locked her in a bedroom at a party in a Washington suburb in 1982, when she was 15 and he was 17, according to testimony released ahead of the hearing.

Blasey Ford says Kavanaugh climbed on top of her, tried to take off her clothes, and put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream for help.

Kavanaugh will deny all of the allegations but will tell the committee that he was ‘‘not perfect’’ in high school.

‘‘I drank beer with my friends, usually on weekends. Sometimes I had too many. In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,’’ he said in testimony released yesterday.

Republican Judiciary committee staffers yesterday were trying to interview another woman, Julie Swetnick.

Earlier in the day, she said she attended more than 10 house parties in the Washington area from 1981 to 1983 where Kavanaugh was present.

She described gang rapes she said occurred, in which boys would line up to rape incapaci tated girls.

‘‘In approximately 1982, I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes, where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present,’’ she said, mentioning the name of a close friend of Kavanaugh. She did not identify her attackers and did not accuse Kavanaugh of taking part.

‘‘During the incident, I was incapacitated without my consent and unable to fight off the boys raping me. I believe I was drugged using Quaaludes (a sedative) or something similar placed in what I was drinking,’’ she said. — Reuters