Anticipation heightens before hearing Monday
Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, appeared to be on a glide path to confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate last week until a woman accused him of sexual assault in 1982, when both were teenagers.
The Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, postponed a vote on the nomination so the committee can question Kavanaugh and his accuser in a hearing scheduled for Monday.
Question: Who made the allegation, and what is she charging?
Answer: Christine Blasey Ford, 51, a professor of clinical psychology at Palo Alto University, alleges that an intoxicated Kavanaugh pinned her down on a bed at a Maryland house party in the summer of 1982 and tried to strip off her clothes. She says Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand to silence her, and she feared he “might inadvertently kill her.” She says Mark Judge, a Georgetown Prep School classmate of Kavanaugh, was also in the room. Judge jumped on top of them, causing everyone to tumble off the bed, and she fled, according to her account.
Q: What does Kavanaugh say?
A: Kavanaugh issued a statement saying, “This is a completely false allegation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes — to her or to anyone. Because this never happened, I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself (last week.)”
Q: Is it simply a he said, she said?
A: Judge told The New Yorker, “I have no recollection of that.” He told The Weekly Standard, “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”
Judge, a filmmaker and author who has written for The Daily Caller, The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post, issued a letter declining to appear at the hearing but said, “Brett Ka- vanaugh and I were friends in high school, but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.”
Though Judge could be subpoenaed, the committee has showed no signs of ordering his appearance.
In his 1997 memoir “Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk,” Judge wrote about his and fellow classmates’ heavy drinking at the prep school he attended with Kavanaugh.
The memoirs include a beach party scene in which a high school classmate named Bart O’Kavanaugh “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.”
Ford said she cannot remember exactly where the house was, how she got there or how she got home but produced notes taken by her therapist in 2012 in which she discusses the incident, which she refers to as a “rape attempt,” without mentioning the name of a perpetrator.
Q: Will Kavanaugh and Ford appear at the hearing Monday?
A: Kavanaugh agreed to testify. Ford, through her lawyers, said an FBI investigation of the incident should precede any hearing. That, she said, “will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a nonpartisan manner.”
Q: Will there be an FBI investigation?
A: Uncertain. The FBI conducted its normal background checks and turned over its report. It cannot reopen the case unless the White House orders it. Trump said Tuesday that the FBI “doesn’t want to be involved, but if they wanted to be, I would certainly do that.” Wednesday, the president said the FBI investigated Kavanaugh six times over his judicial career.
Q: Will the hearing be delayed to allow for any such investigation?
A: Grassley said he sees no reason for a delay, since nothing the FBI does “would have any bearing on what she tells the committee.”