Fiery Kavanaugh denies quiet accuser in Senate showdown

September 28, 2018 at 12:01a.m.

• Tears and raw fury: Kavanaugh hearing makes for riveting TV

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

It was a day like few others in Senate history.

Kavanaugh and Ford Testify

Gallery

California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford quietly recounted her “100 percent” certainty Thursday that President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court had sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers.

Then Brett Kavanaugh defiantly testified he was “100 percent certain” he did no such thing.

That left senators to decide whether the long day of testimony tipped their confirmation votes for or against Trump’s nominee in a deeply partisan fight with the future of the high court and possibly control of Congress in the balance.

Showing their own certainty, Republicans quickly scheduled a recommendation vote for this morning in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where they hold an 11-10 majority. They’re hoping for a final Senate roll call next week, seating Kavanaugh on the court shortly after the October start of its new term.

In the committee’s packed hearing room for hour upon hour Thursday, both Kavanaugh and Ford said the alleged assault and the storm of controversy that has erupted 36 years later had altered their lives forever and for the worse – perhaps the only thing they agreed on during their separate testimony marked by a stark contrast of tone and substance.

Ford recounted for the senators and a nationwide TV audience her long-held secret of the alleged assault in a locked room at a gathering of friends when she was just 15. The memory was “locked” in her brain, she said. Ford delivered her testimony with deliberate certitude, though admitting gaps in her memory as she choked back tears at some points and said she “believed he was going to rape me.”

Hours later, Kavanaugh entered the hearing room fuming. He angrily denied her allegation, alternating a loud, defiant tone with near tears of his own, particularly when discussing his family. He decried his confirmation opposition as a “national disgrace.” He interrupted senators and dismissed some questions with a flippant “whatever.”

“You have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with ‘search and destroy,”’ he said, referring to the Constitution’s charge to senators’ duties in confirming high officials.

Democrats pressed the judge to call for an FBI investigation into the claims, but he would say only, “I welcome whatever the committee wants to do.”

Republicans are concerned, among other reasons, that further investigations could push a vote past the November elections that may switch Senate control back to the Democrats and make consideration of any Trump nominee more difficult.

Trump made his feelings newly clear that he was sticking by his choice. “His testimony was powerful, honest and riveting,” he tweeted. “The Senate must vote!”

The day opened with Ford, now a 51-year-old college professor in California, raising her right hand to swear under oath about the allegations she said she never expected to share publicly until they leaked in the media two weeks ago and reporters started staking out her home and work.

As Anita Hill did more two decades ago when she alleged sexual misconduct by Clarence Thomas, the mom of two testified before a committee with only male senators on the Republican side of the dais.

The psychology professor described what she says was a harrowing assault in the summer of 1982.

Then Kavanaugh strode into the committee room, arranged his nameplate, and with anger on his face started to testify with a statement he said he had shown only one other person. Almost immediately he choked up.

“My family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed,” he said.

He lashed out over the time it took the committee to convene the hearing after Ford’s allegations emerged, singling out the Democrats for “unleashing” forces against him. He mocked Ford’s allegations that have accused him of sexual impropriety.

Even if senators vote down his confirmation, he said, “you’ll never get me to quit.”