Ford Could Testify: Lawyer
Kavanaugh Accuser Says Not Monday, Though
An attorney for Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, said Thursday that her appearing at a hearing on Monday to detail her claims is “not possible” but she could testify later in the week.
Debra Katz, Ford’s lawyer, relayed the response to top staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, requesting to set up a call with them to “discuss the conditions under which [Ford] would be prepared to testify next week.”
“As you are aware, she’s been receiving death threats which have been reported to the FBI and she and her family have been forced out of their home,” Katz wrote to the committee. “She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety. A hearing on Monday is not possible and the committee’s insistence that it occur then is arbitrary in any event.”
The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said through a spokesman late Thursday that he would be consulting with colleagues on how to proceed. Kavanaugh wrote to Grassley in a letter released by the White House that he
looks forward to testifying.
“I continue to want a hearing as soon as possible, so that I can clear my name,” Kavanaugh said in the letter. “Since the moment I first heard this allegation, I have categorically and unequivocally denied it. I remain committed to defending my integrity.”
Amid the maneuvering, the nomination was roiled further late Thursday by incendiary tweets from a prominent Kavanaugh friend and supporter who publicly identified another high school classmate of Kavanugh’s as Ford’s possible attacker.
Ed Whelan, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, pointed to floor plans, online photographs and other information to suggest a location for the house party in suburban Maryland that Ford described. He also named and posted photographs of the classmate he suggested could be responsible.
Ford dismissed Whelan’s theory in a statement late Thursday: “I knew them both, and socialized with” the other classmate, Ford said, adding that she had once visited him in the hospital. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill and White House officials immediately sought to distance themselves from Whelan’s claims and said they were not aware of his plans to identify the former classmate, now a middle school teacher, who could not be reached for comment and did not answer the door at his house Thursday night.
Whelan did not respond to requests for comment. He had told people around him that he had spent several days putting together the theory and thought it was more convincing than her story, according to two friends who had talked to him.
Whelan has been involved in helping to advise Kavanaugh’s confirmation effort and is close friends with both Kavanaugh and Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society who has been helping to spearhead the nomination.
Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident happened to Ford, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Democratic senators, pointing to the highly charged Anita Hill hearings in October 1991, have defended Ford’s request to have the FBI do its own probe before she testifies. Back then, the FBI report into Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment against now-Justice Clarence Thomas was finished on Sept. 26, 1991 — three days after its inquiry began, according to a Washington Post report at the time.
“Someone who is lying does not ask the FBI to investigate their claims,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said at an event on Capitol Hill. “Who is not asking the FBI to investigate these claims? The White House. Judge Kavanaugh has not asked to have the FBI investigate these claims. Is that the reaction of an innocent person? It is not.”
Gillibrand said Senate Republicans’ ultimatum of a Monday hearing was “bullying.”
Republicans have rejected the comparisons to the Hill proceedings.
Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee has interviewed lawyers to be potential outside counsel who would lead the questioning in the highly charged hearing, according to two people familiar with the process. If the outside counsel was a woman, it could help with an optics issue facing the 11 Republican senators on the committee, who are all men.
The objective of bringing in an outside lawyer, one Senate GOP official said, would be having an “experienced attorney who hasn’t been so deeply involved in the nomination and could bring some fresh eyes to evaluate everything fairly and firmly.”
A variation of this plan had been discussed since at least Tuesday, when Republicans had discussed a proposal to hire a female attorney and have her do all the questioning, while the GOP senators on the committee would ask no questions, according to another Senate GOP official.
Earlier this week, Kavanaugh told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, one of his most fervent supporters, that Ford has the wrong perpetrator in mind and that he has not attended a party like the one Ford described in the Post account.
A handful of pivotal senators have yet to disclose how they will ultimately vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, including Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, Alaska. On Thursday, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott — both independents — issued a statement opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Earlier Thursday, Senate Republicans had reiterated their resolve to press forward with a vote on Kavanaugh in the coming days if Ford chose not to testify before the 21member Judiciary Committee.
“If she doesn’t want to participate and tell her story, there’s no reason for us to delay,” Sen. John Cornyn, Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber, told CNN. “I think it all depends on what she decides to do. We’ve all made clear this is her chance.”
Ford has alleged that while she and Kavanaugh were at a house party in the early 1980s, when the two were in high school, Kavanaugh drunkenly pinned her to a bed, groped her and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams as he tried to take off her clothes. Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied the allegations.
“As you are aware, she’s been receiving death threats which have been reported to the FBI and she and her family have been forced out of their home. She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.”
Debra Katz, Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyer