Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Hearing

[fraurosena]

Kavanaugh's alleged victim has come forward as her confidentiality was broken and she want to tell her story in her own words. Christine Blasey Ford is professor of clinical psychology at Palo Alto and her work has been widely published in academic journals. She has taken an FBI polygraph test, the results of which concluded she was truthful about her allegations.

California professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault

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Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.

Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.

While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”

Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.

Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.  

Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a “rape attempt” in her late teens. 

In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions, she recounted being trapped in a room with two drunken boys, one of whom pinned her to a bed, molested her and prevented her from screaming. He said he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh’s last name and voiced concern that Kavanaugh — then a federal judge — might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.

On Sunday, the White House sent The Post a statement Kavanaugh issued last week, when the outlines of Ford’s account first became public: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

Through a White House spokesman, Kavanaugh declined to comment further on Ford’s allegation and did not respond to questions about whether he knew her during high school. The White House had no additional comment.

Reached by email Sunday, Judge declined to comment. In an interview Friday with The Weekly Standard, before Ford’s name was known, he denied that any such incident occurred. “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way,” Judge said. He told the New York Times that Kavanaugh was a “brilliant student” who loved sports and was not “into anything crazy or illegal.”

Christine Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a consortium with Stanford University, training graduate students in clinical psychology. Her work has been widely published in academic journals.

She contacted The Post through a tip line in early July, when it had become clear that Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of possible nominees to replace retiring justice Anthony M. Kennedy but before Trump announced his name publicly. A registered Democrat who has made small contributions to political organizations, she contacted her congresswoman, Democrat Anna G. Eshoo, around the same time. In late July, she sent a letter via Eshoo’s office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

In the letter, which was read to The Post, Ford described the incident and said she expected her story to be kept confidential. She signed the letter as Christine Blasey, the name she uses professionally. 

For weeks, Ford declined to speak to The Post on the record as she grappled with concerns about what going public would mean for her and her family — and what she said was her duty as a citizen to tell the story.

She engaged Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer known for her work on sexual harassment cases. On the advice of Katz, who believed Ford would be attacked as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent in early August. The results, which Katz provided to The Post, concluded that Ford was being truthful when she said a statement summarizing her allegations was accurate.

By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.

Her story leaked anyway. On Wednesday, The Intercept reported that Feinstein had a letter describing an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school, and that Feinstein was refusing to share it with her Democratic colleagues.

Feinstein soon released a statement: “I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” she wrote. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”

The FBI received a version of the letter with Ford’s name redacted, according to a Republican official with knowledge of the letter, and then sent it to the White House to be included in Kavanaugh’s background file. The White House sent it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, making it available to all senators.

As pressure grew, the New York Times reported that the incident involved “possible sexual misconduct.”

By then, Ford had begun to fear she would be exposed, particularly after a BuzzFeed reporter visited her at her home and tried to speak to her as she was leaving a classroom where she teaches graduate students. Another reporter called her colleagues to ask about her.

On Friday, the New Yorker reported the letter’s contents but did not reveal Ford’s identity. Soon after, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) released a letter from 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh when he attended high school from 1979 to 1983 at Georgetown Prep, an all-boys school in North Bethesda. 

“Through the more than 35 years we have known him, Brett has stood out for his friendship, character, and integrity,” the women wrote. “In particular, he has always treated women with decency and respect. That was true when he was in high school, and it has remained true to this day.”

As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being chipped away. Her calculation changed.

“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she said, explaining her decision to come forward. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”

Katz said she believes Feinstein honored Ford’s request to keep her allegation confidential, but “regrettably others did not.”

“Victims must have the right to decide whether to come forward, especially in a political environment that is as ruthless as this one,” Katz said. “She will now face vicious attacks by those who support this nominee.” 

After so many years, Ford said she does not remember some key details of the incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior year at Georgetown Prep.

At the time, Ford said, she knew Kavanaugh and Judge as “friendly acquaintances” in the private-school social circles of suburban Maryland. Her Holton-Arms friends mostly hung out with boys from the Landon School, she said, but for a period of several months socialized regularly with students from Georgetown Prep.

Ford said she does not remember how the gathering came together the night of the incident. She said she often spent time in the summer at the Columbia Country Club pool in Chevy Chase, where in those pre-cellphone days, teenagers learned about gatherings via word of mouth. She also doesn’t recall who owned the house or how she got there.

Ford said she remembers that it was in Montgomery County, not far from the country club, and that no parents were home at the time. Ford named two other teenagers who she said were at the party. Those individuals did not respond to messages on Sunday morning.

She said she recalls a small family room where she and a handful of others drank beer together that night. She said that each person had one beer but that Kavanaugh and Judge had started drinking earlier and were heavily intoxicated.

In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made several references to drinking, claiming membership to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Keg City Club.” He and Judge are pictured together at the beach in a photo in the yearbook.

Judge is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post. He chronicled his recovery from alcoholism in “Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk,” which described his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school, renamed in the book “Loyola Prep.” Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing reference to a “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.”

Through the White House, Kavanaugh did not respond to a question about whether the name was a pseudonym for him.

Ford said she left the family room to use the bathroom, which was at the top of a narrow stairway. She doesn’t remember whether Kavanaugh and Judge were behind her or already upstairs, but she remembers being pushed into a bedroom and then onto a bed. Rock-and-roll music was playing with the volume turned up high, she said.

She alleges that Kavanaugh — who played football and basketball at Georgetown Prep — held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication. Judge stood across the room, she said, and both boys were laughing “maniacally.” She said she yelled, hoping that someone downstairs would hear her over the music, and Kavanaugh clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her.

At one point, she said, Judge jumped on top of them, and she tried unsuccessfully to wriggle free. Then Judge jumped on them again, toppling them, and she broke away, she said.

She said she locked herself in the bathroom and listened until she heard the boys “going down the stairs, hitting the walls.” She said that after five or ten minutes, she unlocked the door and made her way through the living room and outside. She isn’t sure how she got home.

Ford said she has not spoken with Kavanaugh since that night. And she told no one at the time what had happened to her. She was terrified, she said, that she would be in trouble if her parents realized she had been at a party where teenagers were drinking, and she worried they might figure it out even if she did not tell them.

“My biggest fear was, do I look like someone just attacked me?” she said. She said she recalled thinking: “I’m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn’t happen, and he didn’t rape me.”

Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life. 

“I think it derailed me substantially for four or five years,” she said. She said she struggled academically and socially and was unable to have healthy relationships with men. “I was very ill-equipped to forge those kinds of relationships.”

She also said she believes that in the longer term, it contributed to anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms with which she has struggled.

She married her husband in 2002. Early in their relationship, she told him she had been a victim of physical abuse, he said. A decade later, he learned the details of that alleged abuse when the therapist asked her to tell the story, he said.

He said he expects that some people, upon hearing his wife’s account, will believe that Kavanaugh’s high school behavior has no bearing upon his fitness for the nation’s high court. He disagrees.

“I think you look to judges to be the arbiters of right and wrong,” Russell Ford said. “If they don’t have a moral code of their own to determine right from wrong, then that’s a problem. So I think it’s relevant. Supreme Court nominees should be held to a higher standard.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

White House position: Every man attempted rape in high school

 

[Cartmann99]

Trump Believes There Is a ‘Conspiracy’ to Submarine the Kavanaugh Nomination

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In the hours after a 51-year-old California professor came forward to publicly alleged that Judge Brett Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her while they were in high school, the White House signaled no interest in slowing Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

Instead, the President’s team and his allies on and off the Hill began to mount a vigorous defense against the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, questioning why she had identified herself only now, and framing Kavanaugh’s alleged antics as almost commonplace in nature.

A senior White House official told The Daily Beast that, as of Sunday evening, things are still “full steam ahead” for Kavanaugh. On Friday afternoon, a different White House official confirmed that President Trump had been made aware of the earlier reports involving the Kavanaugh sexual misconduct allegation—reports that did not name the accuser.

The president has told those close to him in recent days that he believes there is a “conspiracy” or organized effort by Democrats to smear Kavanaugh and try to derail the nomination of a “good man.” One Trump confidant said on Sunday that they “can’t imagine that” Ford coming forward will change the president’s position, and that it will far more likely cause Trump to dig in and attack those going after Kavanaugh.

The response from Team Trump rang all too familiar for women who have come forward in the past to allege that they had been targeted by prominent male officials. And for veterans of Clarence Thomas’ nomination for the Supreme Court seat some three decades ago, the echoes were even more profound. The extent to which lessons have been learned from that episode —and what specific lessons they are—could very well determine Kavanaugh’s fate in the coming days.

While Trump’s team quickly rushed to his defense, other Republicans signaled that they wanted to pump the breaks.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he would be open to Ford providing information to the committee, so long as it was done “immediately, so the process can continue as scheduled.” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), another member of the committee, went a step further saying “we can’t vote until we hear more” from Ford and that he was “not comfortable voting yes”until they did.

A spokesman for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, initially claimed that what was “disturbing” about the story was that it was just surfacing now after 35 years. The spokesman later said that Grassley was working to set up calls with Kavanaugh and Ford ahead of the scheduled vote.

The likelihood of a protracted and ugly political fight over a crucial Supreme Court seat now hangs heavily over Washington D.C. For days, it had been simmering near the surface, with rumors circulating that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was sitting on a letter from a woman accusing Kavanaugh of a dark episode in his past. Feinstein declined to publish the letter (let alone acknowledge its existence) because, as she later said, she’d been instructed by its author to not reveal her identity. In the middle of the week, The Intercept reported the letter’s existence. On Friday, The New Yorker detailed the episode covered in the letter.

On Sunday, Ford finally told her story to The Washington Post. In the piece, she claimed that during high school she was taken into a room with Kavanaugh and a friend, and that Kavanaugh pinned her down, groped her and tried “to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it.”  She said she tried to scream during the alleged incident, but Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth.

Ford initially came forward anonymously to the Post in July, but declined to be identified until now because, as she explained: “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” Kavanaugh has “categorically and unequivocally” denied the allegations in the Post story.

While Democrats quickly demanded that the Senate Judiciary Committee postpone its vote on the Kavanaugh confirmation, conservatives saw a conspicuously-timed news story. And it wasn’t just die hard Trump supporters seeing nefarious undertones behind Ford coming forward, but gray-bearded establishment types as well.

Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition told The Daily Beast, that the allegations were “spurious” and “false” and  “transparently a desperate, last-minute attempt by Senate Democrats to delay the confirmation of one of the most eminently qualified Supreme Court nominees in modern history.” He did not specify how he determined they were false (Ford reportedly passed a lie detector test and recounted the incident—though without naming Kavanaugh—to a therapist she and her husband were seeing in 2012).

Ed Rollins, current co-chairman of the pro-Trump Great America PAC said that he completely agreed with the White House’s strategy to proceed as normal on the nomination, telling The Daily Beast: “He is eminently qualified! They need to get him confirmed now.” Remarking on Flake’s reaction to the news, Rollins said, “Flake will do anything to undo the Trump agenda. If this is the new standard, no one will ever want or be able to serve in government or on the judiciary.” Flake voted for Trump's tax cut bill, the president's signature legislative achievement.

Others, like former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), a top Trump ally, insisted that Ford’s story wasn’t credible because of the timing of her decision to finally come forward. But, even if the accusations were true, Kingston added, it was of questionable significance.

“Let’s all step back and think about our own perfect behavior when we were in high school,” Kingston told The Daily Beast. “I think there have been enough people from both parties, although far more liberals than conservatives, who have received such allegations… Not many, however, have been accused of things that they may have done in high school—but something that was bottled up until now. Let’s face it, Democrats would do anything possible to derail a Trump nomination.”

This woman has already been doxxed on Twitter, so I hope she's hired a bodyguard by now.

[AmazonGrace]

Susan Collins, still looking for a spine 

 

[fraurosena]

Ruh-roh...

Only two of the 65 women who vouched for Kavanaugh stand by him after accuser comes forward

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Shortly after the contents of an anonymous letter were revealed last week accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault as a teenager, Senate Republicans issued a letter signed by 65 women vouching for his character.

After the accuser came forward Sunday and put her name behind the allegations, only two of those dozens of women stood by Kavanaugh on the record, reported Politico.

The website attempted to contact all the high school acquaintances of Kavanaugh who signed on to the open letter, which was released shortly after the claims were made public.

The timing of that letter led many to speculate that GOP lawmakers were aware of the accusation, which Kavanaugh has denied, before Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) received the letter and turned it over to the FBI, which declined to investigate further.

More than two dozen of those women did not immediately respond to Politico, and two declined to comment.

But two women, Meghan McCaleb and Stephanie Conway McGill, continued to back Kavanaugh after Christine Blasey Ford came forward to identify herself and described the alleged assault in more detail.

“I stand by the letter I signed,” McGill told Politico. “I do not know this woman.”

McCaleb said: “I absolutely stand by the letter we signed.”

Ford’s attorney said she would be willing to testify about the alleged assault before Congress, which is scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation Thursday for the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

[fraurosena]

Well now, does this mean they will hold another hearing? If they are, and they still want to hold to their Thursday confirmation deadline, they'll have to have this hearing tomorrow. Will the dems agree, or will they be able to thwart it?

Personally, I don't think the repugs will want to hold a hearing on this. The only reason they'll agree to it is if Jeff Flake sticks to his guns about not voting for Kavanaugh if this issue is not resolved.

[fraurosena]

 

Here's sen. Collins reaction. I hope it's just more than words.

 

[fraurosena]

Statement from sen. Leahy about delaying the vote.

 

[Cartmann99]

New television ads are being made:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

So, of course, the Drudge Report went and attacked the victim. And, of course, they got the wrong Christine Ford. And, of course, they use a smear that has absolutely nothing to do with being the victim of sexual assault.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Kellyanne said a sensible thing for once 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Call me totally cynical, but my thinking is that Kavanaugh will be confirmed no matter what, because Evangelicals will be leg humping the GOP (and Trump) for eternity if when Kavanaugh is confirmed.  It's a show hearing with the GOP going though the motions; Dems have zero, ZERO leverage. It's a rigged, done deal; there's too much at stake. 

I can't remember how many GOP defectors it would take to torpedo the nomination (one or two?), but likely if the GOP suspects someone will defect, they've already got their loved ones in a secure location, there's been proof of life videos, but with the threat of torture if they even think about voting against Kavanaugh.  Really, the pressure would be beyond intense. 

[AmazonGrace]

Of course Trump doesn't think that sexual assault is wrong, so. 

 

[Audrey2]

I'm not surprised. Remember, to Republicans and Fundies/ Evangelicals, rape and sexual assault are always the fault of the woman. In their disgusting minds, she said something, did something, or wore something to "ask for it". They feel like a woman "deserves it." They also feel that, if she gets pregnant, even from sexual assault, she's should be forced to have the baby, as she had sex. Therefore, they will always support and excuse the man. I am completely repulsed to write this .

[AmazonGrace]

Pretty sure some people are in jail for decades for stuff they did in high school        

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

They're either going to say that he's a nice guy who always treats women well and washes his hands after he goes to pee pee... or they're going to say he harasses women at the office or covers for sexual harassers.  So hard to tell! 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Brett Kavanaugh’s odd response"

Spoiler

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh has issued a new statement denying the allegation that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl when both were in high school. “This is a completely false allegation,” he said right up front. The Supreme Court nominee insisted that he has “never done anything like what the accuser describes.”

The woman has a name: Christine Blasey Ford. It is off-putting, to say the least, to see Kavanaugh try to depersonalize his accuser, whose name he and everyone else now knows. Kavanaugh then said that he didn’t know who it was “until she identified herself yesterday.” Why, if he never did anything like this, should her identity matter then? In addition, he asserted his willingness to testify about “this false allegation, from 36 years ago.” It’s not clear why the date of the alleged incident is relevant unless he is going to argue in the alternative: I didn’t do it, or if I did, I was in high school. Moreover, having now emphatically denied the incident, he has made his present credibility the issue.

His statement is intriguing for what it does and doesn’t say. Absent from the statement are assertions that:

• He didn’t know Ford.
• He didn’t drink to excess in high school.
• He didn’t attend this party or parties such as the one described by Ford.

One potential problem for Kavanaugh, of course, is that if he knew Ford, and was at this or other similar parties and drank to excess in high school, he becomes (aside from self-interest) a non-credible witness. She apparently has a distinct memory; he allegedly was drunk. That’s a problem for him if she comes across as certain, credible and earnest, while he is relying on his memory as a drunk teenager.

Even creepier is another odd choice by Kavanaugh: He has retained Beth Wilkinson of the law firm Wilkinson Walsh and Eskovitz.  Why does a federal appeals court judge need a lawyer? Well, there is the adage that any man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. But, more to the point, what’s the lawyering that is required here?

One possibility is an attempt to intimidate Ford by holding the threat of slander and/or perjury claims over her head. If so, that’s just dumb. She knows very well the risks she has taken in choosing to come forward. Another possibility is that Kavanaugh needs help with the “I don’t remember” vs. the “it didn’t happen” defenses, which are not exactly the same. Moreover, if he is going to be put under oath, perhaps he wants advice as to what he can say without fear of contradiction and the resulting claims that he was untruthful under oath.

Honestly, I cannot figure out exactly why he wants or needs a lawyer. From a PR perspective, it’s not a smart move.

At this point, public testimony from both Kavanaugh and Ford seems obligatory. The longer that Senate Republicans delay, the longer this will take to resolve. And the passage of time seems to be the thing Republicans have most wanted to avoid throughout this process. They didn’t want to wait for all the documents from Kavanaugh’s tenure to be revealed. They didn’t want to wait until after the midterms. They didn’t want to slow down the train when Ford’s complaint first surfaced. Now they have no choice — which reminds us why lifetime confirmations for the Supreme Court should not be rushed in the first place. At some point, it’s all going to need to come out.

 

[Cartmann99]

I knew this was going to be a complete shitstorm. @JMarie, can you please watch Faux for us tonight? Thanks!

[AmazonGrace]

Can't the state police investigate? 

[Audrey2]

10 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Brett Kavanaugh’s odd response"

  Hide contents

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh has issued a new statement denying the allegation that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl when both were in high school. “This is a completely false allegation,” he said right up front. The Supreme Court nominee insisted that he has “never done anything like what the accuser describes.”

 

In Kavanaugh's mind, I can see him believing he did nothing wrong for 3 reasons. (Remember, as with Trump, there's what he believes and what the truth is. One should not be confused for another.)

First of all, if anything happened, he felt entitled to, because she asked for it (see my above, disgusting post). I am completely against this as a defense to an undefendable behavior, but that's what too many conservatives believe.

Second, he may have had way too much to drink on enough occasions that he doesn't remember what happened/didn't happen. Since she fought him off before potential penetration, it's still possible he was too drunk to remember. I know, in males, that too much alcohol can lead to an inability to perform, but, thankfully, it didn't get that far. This is not an excuse, as it got too far as it was.

Third, he may have behaved this way towards enough girls that he wouldn't remember because this time wasn't specific and memorable.

[onekidanddone]

25 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

I knew this was going to be a complete shitstorm. @JMarie, can you please watch Faux for us tonight? Thanks!

@JMarie is my spirit animal 

[Cartmann99]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Megyn Kelly is not a good person 

 

She makes a good point though. If she made it up she wouldn't have named Kavanaugh's friend as a witness

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a23285652/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-allegations/