Strassel says she’s seen the emails between Grassley’s staff and Ramirez’s lawyers and counts no fewer than six invitations from Republicans in the span of 48 hours for Ramirez to provide some sort of statement to the Committee about what Kavanaugh allegedly did to her, to get the ball rolling on possible testimony.
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Ramirez, who told The New Yorker that she’d been drinking at the time, was initially reluctant to speak publicly “partly because her memories contained gaps”, the magazine said.
“The second accuser has nothing”, Trump told reporters at the United Nations.
The similar wording and arguments that Republicans used suggested a concerted effort to undermine the women’s claims and portray an image of unity among GOP senators while pressing toward a confirmation vote.
In a statement provided by the White House, Kavanaugh said the event at Yale “did not happen” and that the allegation was “a smear, plain and simple”. While another boy watched, she says, Kavanaugh tried to pull her clothes off and covered her mouth when she tried to scream.
Kavanaugh released a statement denying the new charges.
“During our meal, Christine was visibly upset, so I asked her what was going on”, Gildo-Mazzon said in her declaration. Senate Democrats are also investigating a second allegation of sexual misconduct by a woman who was classmates with Kavanaugh at Yale. It took a page from the playbook of the man who picked Kavanaugh for the job, President Donald Trump, using his news organization of choice, often a sort of cheerleader in chief for his administration. “Now Republicans don’t even need to hear her before they move ahead with a vote”, she said.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation would firm up conservative control of the Supreme Court and advance Trump’s goal of moving the high court and the broader federal judiciary to the right.
“I have never had any sexual or physical activity with Dr. Ford”, Kavanaugh said.
If the Republican-led committee approves Kavanaugh, his nomination then faces a confirmation vote in the full Senate. She has merely been identified as “female”.
“Senator Murkowski said it is important that we have a process that is viewed as credible and respected”, Borger wrote in an email to the News-Miner.
During at least three weekends in May, Judge Kavanaugh notes that he was grounded.
“I promised Dr. Ford that I would do everything in my power to avoid a repeat of the “circus” atmosphere in the hearing room that we saw the week of September 4″, Grassley said in announcing Mitchell’s hire.
Brett Kavanaugh looks at his wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh at the start of a FOX News interview with Martha MacCallum, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018, in Washington, about allegations of sexual misconduct against the Supreme Court nominee. “I don’t think because you happen to be a male you’re disqualified from listening to the evidence and making a decision based upon the evidence”, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now”, Kavanaugh said.
The Kavanaugh controversy is unfolding just weeks before November 6 congressional elections in which Democrats are trying to take control of Congress from Republicans, against a backdrop of the #MeToo movement fighting sexual harassment and assault.
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Lawyers for accuser Christine Blasey Ford said the documents were signed by Ford’s husband, who said she first told him about the alleged assault during a couple’s therapy session in 2012. In a broader, depressing sense, the Kavanaugh affair is a parable about the depths to which national political debate in the U.S. has fallen.
