Kavanaugh, accuser to testify Monday

Republicans abruptly laid plans Monday for a Senate committee hearing at which Brett Kavanaugh and the woman alleging he sexually assaulted her decades ago will testify publicly, as GOP leaders grudgingly opted for a dramatic showdown they hoped would prevent the accusation from sinking his Supreme Court nomination.

Just hours after GOP leaders signaled their preference for private, staff telephone interviews of Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said his panel would hold a hearing next Monday with both of them.

Republican aides spoke by phone Monday with Kavanaugh and tried reaching Ford, Grassley said, but Democrats refused to participate in that process.

“To provide ample transparency, we will hold a public hearing Monday to give these recent allegations a full airing,” Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, said in a written statement.

The move would delay a planned vote in the Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court remains “on track”.

In careful remarks at the White House in which he did not offer his view on the actual allegation against his nominee, Trump called for the Senate to go through a “full process” and accepted a small delay in the process, though warned that “it shouldn’t certainly be very much.”

“If it takes a little delay, it will take a little delay,” said Trump, who dismissed as a “ridiculous question” a reporter’s query about whether Kavanaugh, who earlier in the day issued a fresh denial of the allegation against him, had offered to withdraw his name from consideration.

“I think he’s very much on track,” Trump said.

While Democrats demanded a delay in a scheduled Thursday vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination to allow the FBI to investigate, Senate Republicans struggled with how to proceed.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee overseeing the high-stakes nomination, said Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor in California who made the allegation, “deserves to be heard.”

Ford has accused Kavanaugh, a conservative appeals court judge chosen by Trump for a lifetime job on the top US court, of trying to attack her and remove her clothing while drunk in 1982 in a Maryland suburb outside Washington when they were students in different high schools.

In television interviews on Monday, Ford’s Washingtonbased lawyer, Debra Katz, said her client would be willing to speak out publicly. Asked if that included sworn testimony at a public hearing before senators, Katz told CBS’s “This Morning” program: “She’s willing to do what she needs to do.”

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he wants to hold a full Senate vote on Kavanaugh before the Oct. 1 start of the Supreme Court’s new term. It was unclear whether that goal will have to be adjusted.

Trump’s fellow Republicans control the Senate by only a narrow margin, meaning any defections could sink the nomination and deal a major setback to Trump, who has been engaged in a so-far successful effort since becoming president last year to move the Supreme Court and broader federal judiciary to the right.