Trump: Allegations ‘a big, fat con job’
ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON — President Trump will not be at today’s high-stakes Senate hearing where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford will face questions about Ford’s allegation of sexual assault. But the president will loom large over the proceedings — which is exactly what he wants.
Trump, frustrated that Republicans have not been forceful enough in defending Kavanaugh as he now faces three accusers with claims of sexual mistreatment when Kavanaugh was in high school and at Yale, has now taken the messaging into his own hands.
“It’s a big, fat con job,” Trump said of the allegations at a press conference yesterday, saying the claims are merely a Democratic-led smear campaign designed to “obstruct.” The remarks came just hours after Julie Swetnick, through her attorney and frequent Trump antagonist Michael Avenatti, claimed that she and other girls were gang-raped at parties in the 1980s when Kavanaugh was present and may have participated.
Trump stopped short of calling Ford, Swetnick and Deborah Ramirez, who made claims of lewd college behavior, liars. “I won’t get into that game,” Trump said. But he did state that “these are false accusations in certain cases.” And he called on his own personal experience as a reason for his reaction.
“I’ve been accused. False accusations,” Trump said of the multiple women who have made claims of sexual misconduct against him. “It does impact my opinion because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me.”
Trump’s messaging and the midterm election less than six weeks away are just a few of the political land mines that abound as Ford and Kavanaugh testify today. Republicans have tapped Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to question Ford and Kavanaugh on behalf of Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, to avoid the optics of the all-male panel grilling a woman making a claim of sexual assault.
Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (RIowa), who has rebuffed every call by Democrats to delay the hearing or have the FBI vet the new allegations against Kavanaugh, has defended the process.
“Abt 20 of my cmte investigators are tracking down all allegations/ leads & talking to all witnesses & gathering all evidence,” Grassley tweeted yesterday. “We have experienced fed agents on detail from ATF+ICE along w seasoned congressional investigators from my nominations & oversight teams +temp SCOTUS staff.”
But Sen. Lindsey Graham has heeded Trump’s call to come out slugging, publicly casting doubt on Swetnick’s allegation on the eve of the most consequential political event of the midterm election season — and giving Democrats ammunition to cast Republicans as the party who blames women instead of believing them.
“That you would go to 10 parties over two years where you witnessed drugging and raping and you kept coming back, and you never told anybody, you never warned any of your girlfriends — I find that to be over the top,” Graham told reporters yesterday.