Committee postpones vote on Kavanaugh
Senate panel agrees to Monday hearing
WASHINGTON – Senators considering Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court will delay his confirmation to hear next Monday from Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has accused him of sexual assault.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a Thursday vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee as Senate Republicans scrambled to keep Kavanaugh’s confirmation on track. Following a growing chorus of questions about Ford’s allegations, the committee agreed to hold a follow-up hearing with both Ford and Kavanaugh next week.
Ford, 51, came forward publicly Sunday with a detailed account in The Washington Post of an incident that took place at a party when she was 15 and Kavanaugh was 17. Ford claims Kavanaugh held her down and tried to remove her clothes while covering her mouth with his hand and leading her to believe that he could “inadvertently kill me.”
USA TODAY does not normally name accusers of sexual assault, but in this case, Ford came forward publicly to detail her allegations.
The story of the alleged assault first appeared in a New Yorker magazine article last week, but Ford was not identified. Since the story surfaced, Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.
Just hours after GOP leaders signaled their preference for private, staff telephone interviews of Kavanaugh and Ford, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said his panel would hold a hearing next Monday with both of them.
Grassley, R-Iowa, had said in an earlier statement Monday that anyone “who comes forward as Dr. Ford has deserves to be heard.”
“To provide ample transparency, we will hold a public hearing Monday to give these recent allegations a full airing,” Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a written statement.
Grassley had said earlier that the “standard procedure” for handling late updates to “any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties.” He said he had been trying to arrange calls with Kavanaugh and Ford. But he said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., refused to help him set the calls up.
“Unfortunately, committee Republicans have only known this person’s identity from news reports for less than 24 hours and known about her allegations for less than a week,” Grassley said. “Sen. Feinstein, on the other hand, has had this information for many weeks and deprived her colleagues of the information necessary to do our jobs.”
He added that it was “deeply disturbing” that the allegations were “leaked in a way that seemed to preclude Dr. Ford’s confidentiality” and lamented that Ford and Ford’s attorney, Debra Katz, did not directly approach him with the allegations earlier.
During an interview with NBC’s “Today” show, Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, said her client was willing to testify.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who is retiring, told Politico that it “would be best for all involved, including the nominee” if the committee delayed a vote. “If she does want to be heard, she should do so promptly.”
When asked whether she believed the vote should be delayed, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told CNN on Sunday, “I think that might be something they might have to consider.”
“This is not something that came up during the hearings,” she said, according to CNN. “The hearings are now over, and if there is real substance to this, it demands a response.”
Although Murkowski and Corker are not on the Judiciary Committee, Republicans only have a narrow, 51-seat majority in the Senate and every vote will be crucial to Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Maine Republican whom groups opposed to Kavanaugh have desperately tried to sway, said in a tweet Monday that Ford and Kavanaugh “should both testify under oath before the Judiciary Committee. “
On Monday, Collins told CNN she was “very surprised” by the allegation against Kavanaugh.
She said she spoke to Kavanaugh about the allegations in a phone call Friday and that the judge was “very emphatic in his denial.” When asked whether she believed the accuser, she said she did not “know enough to make a judgment at this point.”
Collins told The New York Times on Sunday that she found it “puzzling” that Democrats did not come forward with the allegations earlier, “after having had this information for more than six weeks.”
“If they believed professor Ford, why didn’t they surface this information earlier so that he could be questioned about it?” Collins asked. “And if they didn’t believe her and chose to withhold the information, why did they decide at the 11th hour to release it? It is really not fair to either of them the way it is was handled.”
Feinstein, a Judiciary Committee member, announced Thursday she had forwarded a letter containing the allegations to the FBI, a day before the article in The New Yorker.