Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court Nomination Is in Big Trouble

By John Cassidy, The New Yorker

19 September 18

day after Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser came forward and identified herself as a fifty-one-year-old psychology professor named Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court appears to be in serious jeopardy. Although neither the conservative federal judge nor the White House has given any indication that Kavanaugh intends to drop out, the path to his confirmation now looks much more challenging, and it is one that contains great peril for the Republican Party.

On Monday morning, a lawyer for Ford, who claims that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her during the early nineteen-eighties, at a high-school party in suburban Maryland, said that the accuser would be willing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth,” the lawyer, Debra Katz, said, on the “Today” show. Katz described the alleged attack as an “attempted rape,” adding, “If it were not for the severe intoxication of Brett Kavanaugh, she would have been raped.”

Katz’s statement went a bit beyond what Ford, who teaches at Palo Alto University, in a psychology teaching and research consortium that is closely associated with Stanford, said in an interview with the Washington Post, which was published on Sunday. The Post article states that Ford claims Kavanaugh and a friend “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.”

A bit later on Monday morning, Kavanaugh issued a statement in which he repeated the denials he had made last week. “This is a completely false allegation,” he said. “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes—to her or to anyone . . . I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself.” Kavanaugh also said that he would talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee “in any way the Committee deems appropriate to refute this false allegation, from 36 years ago, and defend my integrity.”

Despite Ford’s decision to come forward, some of Trump’s supporters continued to describe the charges against Kavanaugh as a last-minute Democratic effort to torpedo the nomination. Appearing on “Good Morning America,” Chris Christie said, “This is extraordinarily unfair to Judge Kavanaugh. This is an allegation that is thirty-five-plus years old, and now you’re going to attempt to try to deal with that in a very truncated period of time.” But even Christie said that Ford “needs to be heard, needs to have her allegations looked at.”

It was clear from the comments made by Christie and other Republicans that Ford’s decision to go public had irrevocably altered the political calculus. Charles Grassley, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had scheduled a vote on the nomination for Thursday, which now seems likely to be delayed or abandoned. Grassley hasn’t confirmed this yet. On Monday afternoon, he was “working on a way to hear [Ford] out in an appropriate, precedented & respectful manner.” He didn’t mention any public hearings, though, and he seemed to be referring to the possibility of phone calls between the committee and Ford. Grassley is no longer fully in control of events, however.

On Sunday, after the Washington Post published its piece, a Republican member of the committee, Arizona’s Jeff Flake, said the vote should be pushed back to give more time to investigate the allegations. Because the Republicans only have a majority of one on the committee, they can’t vote to approve Kavanaugh if Flake is not on board.

Even if Grassley could somehow secure a “yes” vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, it is far from certain that the full Senate would replicate it. Three days ago, Republicans on Capitol Hill were dealing with a set of anonymous allegations relating to events that took place decades ago, which Democrats had sat on for months. Now they are facing the prospect of sworn public testimony from a highly educated professional woman who has reportedly taken a lie-detector test, and who, according to the Washington Post, has notes from a therapist that show she discussed the alleged attack in 2012 and 2013, calling it a “rape attempt.”

Unless Ford’s allegations are discredited, it seems virtually unthinkable that the two moderate Republican women who hold the balance of power in the chamber—Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska—would vote to approve Kavanaugh. As Collins walked through the airport in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, a reporter asked her if she believed the accusations against Kavanaugh. “I don’t know enough to make a judgment at this point,” she replied. Later on Monday, Collins issued a statement that said, “Professor Ford and Judge Kavanaugh should both testify under oath before the Judiciary Committee.” Murkowski was less definitive. But, on Sunday night, she did say that the committee might have to consider delaying its vote.

Even the White House appears to have given up any hope of silencing Ford or dismissing her claims entirely. “This woman should not be insulted and she should not be ignored,” Kellyanne Conway, a counsellor to Trump, told Fox News. “I think the Senate is headed to a reasonable approach in that it seems to be allowing this woman to be heard in sworn testimony, allowing Judge Kavanaugh to be heard in sworn testimony.” Later on Monday, Donald Trump chimed in, saying, “I wish the Democrats could have done this a lot sooner. But, with all of that being said, we want to go through the process.” He also said that Kavanaugh was “somebody very special” who “never even had a little blemish on his record.”

So much for all the talk. The real question is: Will the White House and Republican leaders actually allow a potentially sensational set of hearings, with all the political risks that would entail, just weeks before the midterm elections in which they are already struggling mightily to attract women’s votes in key suburban districts? Or will they decide to cut their losses and withdraw the Kavanaugh nomination? We’ll find out soon.