The woman accusing US Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her is willing to tell her story in public to a Senate panel considering his nomination to the Supreme Court, her lawyer said yesterday.
Kavanaugh had been on a smooth confirmation track, but the new allegations have roiled that process. Republican senators have expressed concern over a woman’s private-turned-public allegation that a drunken Kavanaugh groped her and tried to take off her clothes at a party when they were teenagers.
Debra Katz, the attorney for the woman, Christine Blasey Ford, said her client considered the incident to be an attempted rape.
Photo: AP
“She believes that if were not for the severe intoxication of Brett Kavanaugh, she would have been raped,” Katz told NBC’s Today.
Kavanaugh has “categorically and unequivocally” denied the allegations, a statement the White House repeated yesterday.
“This has not changed,” White House spokesman Kerri Kupec said. “Judge Kavanaugh and the White House both stand by that statement.”
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said of Ford yesterday: “She should not be insulted. She should not be ignored. She should testify under oath and she should do it on Capitol Hill.”
Conway, who said she had discussed the situation with US President Donald Trump, said that both Ford and Kavanaugh should testify, but made clear it was up to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
She said US Senator Lindsey Graham had told her it could happen as soon as today and the White House would “respect the process.”
In morning television interviews, Katz said her client, a clinical psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, was willing to tell her story in public to the committee, although no lawmakers or their aides had yet contacted her.
Katz also denied that Ford, a Democrat, is politically motivated.
The Republican-controlled committee appeared nonetheless committed to a vote later this week, despite Ford’s account in the Washington Post.
Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed at a Maryland party in the early 1980s, clumsily tried to remove her clothing and put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream.
Ford said Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge — both “stumbling drunk” — corralled her in a bedroom when she was about 15 and Kavanaugh was about 17.
She said Kavanaugh groped her over her clothes, grinded his body against hers and tried to take off her one-piece swimsuit and the outfit she wore over it. Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand when she tried to scream, she said, and escaped when Judge jumped on them.
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