Appearing alongside his wife Ashley in an interview on the White House-friendly network Fox News – after weeks of avoiding the media – a visibly emotional Kavanaugh doubled down, insisting: “I’m not going anywhere”. Ford says he sexually assaulted her when both were teenagers.
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Kavanaugh is scheduled to appear before the committee on Thursday to defend himself against an allegation of sexual assault against him by Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford. Ford alleges Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party when they were teens decades ago. Kavanaugh, along with three other “witnesses” named by Ford, all say they weren’t at the party in question.
Deborah Ramirez alleged in a story published by The New Yorker Sunday night that while she and Kavanaugh both attended Yale University in the early 1980s, he pulled down his trousers and exposed himself to her.
Brett Kavanaugh says he won’t let “false accusations” drive him from his quest to win Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court. “I have faith in God, and I have faith in the fairness of the American people”, he said. “The same Mitch McConnell who would not give the person Obama wanted to be on his Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, a hearing, right?” They note that neither the accusers nor news organizations have found people willing to provide corroboration, even though both women have named people who they said were present at the alleged incidents.
One Republican close to Kavanaugh’s confirmation process who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record, said, “there’s resolve in the White House”.
Regarding Ford’s testimony, there are still unresolved procedural and logistical issues, her lawyers said, including whether the Judiciary Committee’s Republican senators, who are all male, or staff attorneys would question her.
Kavanaugh said while he doesn’t deny that Ford was sexually assaulted by someone in her past, it was not him.
After six days of “assessing her memories”, Ramirez became confident of them, the authors claim. “What we use to define sexual harassment, assault, and abuse is a lack of consent – not whether there was vaginal penetration or a certain act committed, but that there was sexual contact without consent…”
Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote has been stalled, first by Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh forced himself on her at a high-school party in the early 1980s; and then by a slew of subsequent, and also fantastically conveniently timed, allegations from his college years.
In the Fox News interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum”, Kavanaugh said he’s never done what he’s being accused of – to anyone.
Republicans hold a slim 51-49 Senate majority, meaning Kavanaugh’s confirmation prospects may hinge on the votes of a handful of moderate Republican senators who have not yet announced their intentions, These include Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Jeff Flake.
Mr Trump, at the United Nations for his second General Assembly meeting, called the allegations unfair and unsubstantiated, made by accusers who come “out of the woodwork”.
Kavanaugh said it’s possible he may have met Ford at some time, but he said they were not friends and did not travel in the same social circles.
“A classmate of Ramirez’s, who declined to be identified because of the partisan battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, said that another student told him about the incident either on the night of the party or in the next day or two.
Time to make your actions match your words and show that you truly #BelieveWomen”, tweeted Jody Drenzer Alperin from the protest in the Senate office buildings. He said when he was focused on being No. 1 in his class at Yale, to me, that was so believable.
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As Kavanaugh’s accusers have come forward, Republicans have grown increasingly frustrated with the process and what they believe to be personal smears aimed at stalling a perfectly capable man’s ascent to the Supreme Court.
