Kavanaugh accuser wants FBI inquiry
Her testimony before Senate committee is in question
WASHINGTON — The woman who has accused President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault all but ruled out appearing at an extraordinary Senate hearing scheduled for next week to hear her allegations, insisting on Tuesday that the FBI investigate first.
Speaking through her lawyers, Christine Blasey Ford, did not explicitly rule out appearing Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify along with Judge Brett Kavanaugh. But echoing Senate Democrats, she said that an investigation should be “the first step” before she is put “on national television to relive this traumatic and harrowing incident.”
Republicans are unlikely to negoti-
ate an alternative date and could go ahead with the hearing without her or declare it unnecessary if she refuses to appear and move quickly to a vote. They have repeatedly stressed that Monday would be Blasey’s opportunity to testify, either privately or publicly, and that they then planned to move forward with the confirmation process
The apparent standoff was yet another turn in a high-stakes drama over the president’s second Supreme Court nominee that began Thursday, when the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee revealed that she had referred the sexual assault allegations to federal investigators. Blasey, a research psychologist in Northern California, has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago when both were teenagers at a boozy high school party, a charge that he has categorically denied.
In a letter to the committee, Blasey’s lawyers complained that some senators have already “made up their minds” but did not explicitly rule out appearing before them. In a subsequent appearance on CNN, however, one of the lawyers, Lisa J. Banks, seemed to suggest that Blasey would not show up.
“She’s not prepared to talk with them at a hearing on Monday,” Banks said. Even if Republicans agreed to an FBI investigation, it would take time to complete, she added. “No legitimate investigation is going to happen between now and Monday.”
But Republicans drew a hard line. “If she does not come on Monday, we are going to move on and vote on Wednesday,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the committee, told Fox News on Tuesday evening.
Trump joined other Republicans in rejecting an FBI investigation of the long-ago episode. The bureau “said that they really don’t do that, that’s not what they do,” Trump said Tuesday during a news conference. “And now they have done supposedly six background checks over the years as Judge Kavanaugh has gone beautifully up the ladder.”
In the letter to the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday evening, Blasey’s lawyers said that she has been the target of “vicious harassment and even death threats” since her name was made public on Sunday in an interview published in the Washington Post. Her email has been hacked, she has been impersonated online and she and her family have been forced to relocate out of their home, according to the lawyers, Banks and her partner Debra Katz.
“While Dr. Ford’s life was being turned upside down, you and your staff scheduled a public hearing for her to testify at the same table as Judge Kavanaugh in front of two dozen U.S. Senators on national television to relive this traumatic and harrowing incident,” the lawyers wrote to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee’s chairman. The hearing “would include interrogation by Senators who appear to have made up their minds that she is ‘mistaken’ and ‘mixed up.’ ”
Blasey, who is sometimes referred to by her married name, Ford, “wants to cooperate with the committee and with law enforcement officials” but believes that a “full investigation” by the FBI would be necessary to form a nonpartisan assessment before any hearing, the lawyers wrote.
Grassley did not respond immediately on Tuesday night, but he has said Blasey could testify in private if she preferred. An aide to Grassley said the committee never intended to seat the two witnesses together at one table or even on one panel. The two could testify one after the other without facing each other.
Both Blasey, 51, and Kavanaugh, 53, had said on Monday morning that they were willing to come before the committee and Grassley went ahead to postpone a vote on his confirmation and schedule a hearing for next week.
Democrats and Republicans spent much of Tuesday arguing over the scope and shape of what such a hearing would entail. Grassley told radio host Hugh Hewitt that Kavanaugh and Blasey would be the only witnesses, prompting pushback from top Democrats.
Another potential witness, Mark Judge, a friend of Kavanaugh’s who Blasey said was in the room when the assault occurred, told the Judiciary Committee that he does not remember the episode. “I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes,” he said in a statement sent by his lawyers, adding that “I do not wish to speak publicly” about the matter.
As senators in both parties grappled with how to move forward, Trump’s advisers and Kavanaugh’s allies appeared to be settling on a strategy of defending him by suggesting that this must be a case of mistaken identity. Under the emerging strategy, Kavanaugh’s defenders would accept that Blasey was in fact assaulted but would insist that it must have been by someone other than Kavanaugh because he denied it.
The approach reflects the shifting reality of the #MeToo movement when it has become politically perilous to directly attack the credibility of women who come forward to tell their stories. By suggesting that perhaps there was confusion after more than 30 years, White House allies said that they could offer wavering Republicans whose votes are critical for his confirmation another explanation for the he-said-she-said conflict without tearing down Blasey.
The line of defense seemed to be previewed on Monday when Kavanaugh called Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a member of the Judiciary Committee, to discuss the allegations. Hatch told reporters afterward that he believed Kavanaugh. “I think she’s mistaken something” or is “mixed up,” he said.
Two people familiar with the call, who did not want to be identified discussing it, said the judge insisted to Hatch that he did not do what he was accused of and then, in response to a question, agreed that it was possible that somebody else might have.
Blasey has been uncertain about some details of the episode, including when it happened and whose house they were at. But this strategy carries its own risks. The letter from Blasey’s lawyers strongly suggested that she would find it offensive to assert that she would not remember who pinned her down to a bed, groped her, tried to take her clothing off and covered her mouth to keep her from screaming at that party in the 1980s.
Kavanaugh has told associates that he did not know who his accuser was until she identified herself in the Post and that once he saw her name he vaguely recalled her being part of the social circle associated with his allboys high school in suburban Maryland at the time.
A person close to Blasey, who asked not to be identified to discuss her situation in detail, said Blasey knew Kavanaugh in passing before the gathering where she says the attack took place, which could make it harder for his defenders to make a case that she had confused him for someone else.
The conflicting stories generated a political spectacle in Washington on Tuesday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., posted on Twitter a video clip of Kavanaugh speaking at his alma mater, Georgetown Preparatory School, in 2015. “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep,” he said to laughter. “That’s been a good thing for all of us, I think.”
Warren added: “I can’t imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice?”
Republicans, clearly mindful of the optics, were considering employing a special counsel or staff to question Blasey and Kavanaugh, to avoid a repeat of the Hill-Thomas scenario. Democrats accused Republicans of trying to rush through a hearing without a proper investigation of serious charges.