Accuser, nominee firmly state cases
After hearing conflicting accounts, Senate panel to vote on confirming Kavanaugh for high court
Testifying to a bitterly divided Senate committee and a transfixed nation, Bay Area professor Christine Blasey Ford said Thursday she is “100 percent” sure that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when the two were teenagers 36 years ago — an allegation the judge decried angrily as a plot by Democrats and a “national disgrace.”
The daylong hearing was combative, with neither side backing away from their conflicting versions of past events. Republicans said they would hold a committee vote Friday morning — though the outcome remained uncertain after a key member expressed doubts following testimony. A full Senate vote could happen early next week.
The hearing came as the nation comes to terms with numerous sex harassment and assault scandals and a #MeToo backlash from survivors who have their own stories. And it brought back memories but also stood in contrast to the 1991 hearings on Anita Hill’s sexual harassment complaint against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
Holding back tears, Ford testified Thursday that she vividly recalls Kavanaugh and a friend drunkenly laughing
while she was pinned to a bed.
“The laughter, uproarious laughter between the two of them and their having fun at my expense” is her strongest recollection of the day in 1982, Ford said, her voice breaking at times, that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed while his friend Mark Judge stood nearby.
Kavanaugh, who spoke angrily for much of his testimony, also appeared near tears at times as he described the impact of the 11th-hour allegations. “My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed,” he said.
He mentioned the possibility of rejection for a nomination that had seemed assured before Ford’s allegations surfaced last week. “You may defeat me in the final vote, but you’ll never get me to quit,” he told committee Democrats.
At stake in the dueling accounts is a critical seat on the closely divided court. Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge since 2006, to succeed the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy had seemed to be headed toward confirmation in a Senate with a 51-49 Republican majority before Ford’s allegations surfaced this month.
The next justice could determine the court’s direction on issues such as abortion, environmental regulation, minority rights and presidential powers.
President Trump tweeted his support for his nominee as the hearing wrapped up: “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!”
A potentially significant political development occurred at the end of the hearing, when Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, the only Republican committee member yet to declare his support of the nominee, said that both Ford and Kavanaugh had presented “compelling” testimony and there was “doubt and uncertainty going out of this room.”
Senate Republican leaders agreed to the one-day hearing after Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, told her congressional representatives that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her at a gathering of teens in Maryland, when he was 17 and she was 15. At least three other women have since accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in the 1980s and 1990s, but Republicans allowed only Ford to testify and rejected her requests to call supporting witnesses or seek an FBI investigation.
In 3½ hours of testimony, Ford, 51, said she did not remember every detail of the events but vividly recalled her assailants enjoying themselves.
“They were laughing with each other. I was underneath one of them while the two laughed, two friends having a really good time,” she said.
Kavanaugh moved from anger to near tears in a 45minute opening statement he composed Wednesday, scrapping a brief prepared statement he had released earlier in the day. When Democratic attacks at his first confirmation hearing two weeks ago went nowhere, he said, “some of you were lying in wait” with “a long series of lastminute smears.”
“I am innocent of this charge” and have never had any physical or sexual contact with Ford, a person he does not remember, Kavanaugh said. He said a detailed calendar he has kept of his activities since 1980 contained no indication that he been at a weekend party in the time or place described by Ford. And three people described by Ford as present at the party have declared, under oath, that they recall no such event, Kavanaugh said.
Ford, asked about their denial earlier in the hearing, said two of those people, a man and a woman, had not been in the room at the time of the attack she described and had no reason to recall the party, and the third was Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend and alleged accomplice.
Kavanaugh batted away repeated questions about his drinking in high school and college, saying he worked hard in school and sports and got into Yale Law School. He also rejected the notion that he disparaged the name of a girl he knew in high school in his yearbook post.
The committee’s 11 Republicans, all men, avoided the appearance of a male-vs.female spectacle like the Anita Hill hearings. They delegated questioning of Ford to Rachel Mitchell, an Arizona sex crimes prosecutor, who chipped away at a few of the accuser’s details but left her overall testimony unshaken.
Questioned by Mitchell, Ford acknowledged saying different things to a Washington Post reporter and her representatives, Rep. Anna Eshoo and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, about when the alleged attack occurred and how many people were at the party. She also said she often travels by plane despite having expressed reluctance to travel to Washington for the hearing because of a fear of flying. She acknowledged that Feinstein’s office had recommended one of her lawyers and said someone else may have paid for her lie-detector test, which she passed.
But she rejected suggestions by several Republicans, including Trump aides, that she had mistaken someone else for Kavanaugh.
Asked by Feinstein, the committee’s ranking Democratic member, how she could be sure that Kavanaugh was the person who lay on top of her and covered her mouth when she tried to call for help, Ford said, “The same way I’m sure I’m talking to you.”
Sen. Kamala Harris, DCalif., said she found Ford’s account particularly credible because of her own experience prosecuting sex crimes.
“Trauma, shame and fear of consequences almost always cause survivors to delay reporting (sexual assaults), if they report at all,” Harris said. She called Ford “a true profile in courage” and noted that Ford, but not Kavanaugh, had urged the committee to call outside witnesses and seek an FBI investigation of the incident.
During Kavanaugh’s testimony, several Republicans attacked Democrats’ treatment of the nominee.
“You’re right to be angry,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Kavanaugh, describing the allegations as uncorroborated and unfair. “I can’t think of a more embarrassing scandal for the United States since the McCarthy hearings.”
“This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, opened the hearing by blaming Democrats for prolonging the proceedings and delaying Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote. He noted that Feinstein received Ford’s letter on July 30 but did not disclose it until the Washington Post reported it Sept. 13, not mentioning it while the senators met with Kavanaugh in August.
Democrats were determined to “obstruct (the) nomination by any means necessary,” Grassley said. He said the committee could have kept Ford’s identity confidential while looking into her claims.
Feinstein replied that Ford had asked her to keep her letter confidential. She noted that Republicans summoned Ford to a hearing 36 hours after learning about her letter, later agreeing to postpone it by a few days.
“What I find most inexcusable is this rush to judgment,” Feinstein said. “Too often women’s memories and credibility come under assault. They are put on trial.”
“Trauma, shame and fear of consequences almost always cause survivors to delay reporting (sexual assaults), if they report at all.” Sen. Kamala Harris