This is a ‘calculated political hit’
Angry Kavanaugh denies Ford accusation, says he will not be intimidated to withdraw Supreme Court nomination
BATTLING to rescue his Supreme Court nomination, Brett Kavanaugh fought back on Thursday against allegations that he’d sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when they were in high school, telling Congress that allegations by her and others have “totally and permanently destroyed” his family and his reputation.
In a loud voice, the conservative jurist told the Senate Judiciary Committee that his confirmation process had become “a national disgrace”.
“You have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with ‘search and destroy’,” he said.
Kavanaugh said he would not be be “intimidated” into withdrawing.
“You may defeat me in the final vote, but you’ll never get me to quit, never,” he said. “This whole twoweek effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” he said, struggling to hold back tears and at other moments raising his voice. “This has destroyed my family and my good name.”
Kavanaugh said he has no ill will towards his accuser, who testified before him, and professed his innocence. He has submitted calendars from 1982, the year the incident allegedly occurred to show he was likely not around.
“I denied the allegation immediately, categorically and unequivocally. All four people allegedly at the event… have said they recall no such event,” Kavanaugh said.
He called the events around the nomination a “national disgrace”.
Shortly before, Ford had told the same senators that she was “100%” certain a drunken young Kavanaugh was the one who had pinned her to a bed, tried to remove her clothes and clapped a hand over her mouth as she tried to shout for help.
Kavanaugh told the senators, his voice raised: “I have never done this to her or to anyone.”
Behind him in the audience, his wife, Ashley, sat looking stricken. He himself was close to tears when he mentioned his mother and daughter and, later, his father.
Earlier, Ford’s account, delivered in a soft and sometimes-halting voice, came as the Senate Judiciary Committee held an extraordinary session that Republicans hope will salvage Kavanaugh’s chances of joining the high court.
Ford’s tone was polite but firm in three hours of testimony during which she repeated her accusations, but offered no major new revelations.
Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation had seemed assured until Ford came forward and then other women emerged with additional allegations of sexual misconduct. The conservative jurist, now 53, has denied them all.
President Donald Trump and most Republicans have rallied behind Kavanaugh with a chance to cement the conservative majority of the court for a generation. Republicans have accused Ford and the other women of making unproved allegations and have questioned why they’d not publicly revealed them for decades.
Among the television viewers on Thursday was Trump, who has mocked the credibility of Kavanaugh’s accusers.
Trump watched aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from the UN, said White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Ford has said of Kavanaugh, “I believed he was going to rape me.” When the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, asked how she could be sure, Ford said, “The same way I’m sure I’m talking to you right now”.
Ford has said Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge was also in the room when she was assaulted. Judge has said he doesn’t remember the incident and has declined to appear before the panel.
Ford spoke carefully, using scientific terminology at one point to describe how a brain might remember details of events decades later. The boys’ laughter was “indelible in the hippocampus”, she said, using her scientific expertise to describe how memories are stored in the brain and adding, “It’s locked in there.”
Republicans are pushing to seat Kavanaugh before the November midterms, when Senate control could fall to the Democrats and a replacement Trump nominee could have even greater difficulty.
Kavanaugh’s grasp on winning confirmation was evident when Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, expressed concern in a private meeting with senators on Wednesday, about a new third accuser, according to a person with knowledge of the gathering. Collins walked into that meeting carrying a copy of Julie Swetnick’s signed declaration, which included fresh accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh and his high school friend, Judge.
In a sworn statement, Swetnick said she witnessed Kavanaugh “consistently engage in excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women in the early 1980s”. Her attorney, Michael Avenatti provided her sworn declaration to the Judiciary panel.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for Deborah Ramirez, who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when they attended Yale University, raised her profile in a round of TV interviews.
In Kavanaugh’s prepared testimony, he acknowledged drinking in high school with his friends, but said he’d never done anything “remotely resembling” what Ford describes. He said he never had a “sexual or physical encounter of any kind” with her.
Ford released sworn statements from people who said she had told them about the assault in later years.