The Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees Supreme Court nominations, has scheduled a hearing for Monday and invited both Ford and Kavanaugh to testify.
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Chairman Grassley said in response to a letter sent to him by Ms. Ford’s attorney Debra Katz, “Dr. Ford’s testimony would reflect her personal knowledge and memory of events”.
Judge Kavanaugh, 53, says the assault allegation, which dates back to his teenage years, is “completely false”.
Women who organized and signed it say it was a rapid response by a social network that endures decades after they graduated.
Since she reluctantly went public, her e-mail has been hacked and she has faced a barrage of harassment including death threats.
He said Ford deserves to be heard and the committee wants to listen to her, allowing her to choose whether it would be in public or private.
Kavanaugh has said he would appear at that hearing.
A video clip of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh joking about his alma mater, Georgetown Prep, surfaced this week, and people are reading into it a great deal. On Wednesday morning, he told reporters that the “FBI really doesn’t do that” when asked if he believes the bureau should open a probe into the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations.
In a statement to The Weekly Standard, Judge strongly denied the allegation against Kavanaugh, as well as the allegation that he was in the room of the alleged assault, as detailed by Christine Blasey Ford.
Flake said this despite a previous statement that he would vote “no” if Ford didn’t get a chance to testify first.
Some Republicans in the Senate are already stepping onto treacherous terrain by suggesting that Ford is “mixed up” or “confused”.
A source close to the president’s son said Wednesday that he did not create the image, and that he wasn’t mocking Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser who has turned Washington inside out in the past week. “If they care about doing the right thing here and treating this seriously as they have said, then they will do the right thing and they will properly investigate this, and she will work with them in that investigation and also to share her story with the committee”, Banks said Tuesday night. The president also called the treatment of Kavanaugh “very unfair” and said that his nominee is “such an outstanding man, it’s very hard for me to imagine anything happened”. “And it is an enormous act of courage understanding the risks that would come her way, she made a decision to tell her story and not have others mischaracterize it”.
Timothy Avery, a former student who is now a postdoctoral research fellow, said he and many others admire her intellect and her kindness on the job. “Otherwise, there are these very serious allegations hanging over the head of a nominee who has emphatically denied them”, she said on radio WVOM in Bangor. “She has the moral duty to present what she says she knows in an appropriate forum, and under our system, that forum is the Senate Judiciary Committee”.
“If there was any indication that he didn’t treat even one of us with respect or acted in a manner that disrespected girls/women”, she wrote in an email, “that would not be the case”.
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This tweet from Kristen Gillibrand sets the tone we are likely to see until November.
