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WASHINGTON – Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh faced new charges on Wednesday threatening to derail his appointment to the Supreme Court, with key Republican senators hesitant in their support and President Trump at a conference in Washington. press persuaded by the testimony of one of the judge's accusing women.
On the eve of a special hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be witnessed by Judge Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor who accused him of assaulting the girl while they were both teenagers, M Trump said The Democrats had plotted to destroy Judge Kavanaugh's reputation. And he deplored what he called "a very dangerous period in our country" in which men are presumed guilty.
But even if he called the charges against Judge Kavanaugh "false accusations", Mr. Trump seemed, for the first time, to recognize the growing challenges his candidate was facing. Asked why he repeatedly accuses the men of their accusers, the president said hearing from Dr. Blasey's testimony might change his mind.
"I'll see what happens tomorrow," Trump told a one-hour press conference in New York, where he attended the UN General Assembly. "I'm going to look, you know, believe it or not. It's possible, they will be convincing.
But the president admitted that his skepticism about Kavanaugh's accusers is tied to his own anger at being himself the target of what he sees as false accusations of sexual misconduct.
"So, when I see him, I see him differently from someone sitting at home watching TV where he says," Judge Kavanaugh, this or that, "said Mr. Trump in a rare moment of televised self-reflection. "This has happened to me several times."
At the hearing on Thursday, Judge Kavanaugh will appear after Dr. Blasey and should state in his opening statement that the allegations against him are "last-minute smears" and "a grotesque and obvious murder," according to testimony Wednesday.
These denials include another charge that surfaced this week, that of a Yale student when Judge Kavanaugh was also present. The student, Deborah Ramirez, said in a interview with the New Yorker that he had been exposed to her at a party in a dormitory. He was not asked to testify by the Judiciary Committee.
Yet, even as he was preparing his defense, Judge Kavanaugh and his allies found themselves facing other accusations of sexual misconduct on the part of women on Wednesday, the most explosive charges coming from -be of a woman represented by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing Stephanie. Clifford, the pornographic actress who said he had an affair with Mr. Trump.
A second new accusation was made in a anonymous letter sent to senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, by a woman who said that her daughter saw the drunken judge Kavanaugh push his friend, a woman he frequented, against a wall " very aggressive and sexually "in 1998.
Her daughter and other witnesses were "shocked," she said. "Her friend, traumatized, called my daughter yesterday, September 21, 2018, wondering what to do," wrote the woman. "They decided to remain anonymous."
Judicial staff lawyers twice questioned Judge Kavanaugh by phone about the charges – on September 17 and Tuesday – to prepare him for Thursday's hearing. Late on Wednesday, as they were preparing to grill her over the phone a third time, the committee released transcripts of previous appeals that revealed new charges during the course of the investigation and, at times, Kavanaugh JA denounced.
"It's crazy," he said at one point.
In the Wednesday evening appeal, Justice Kavanaugh denied the new charges brought by Avenatti's client, Julie Swetnick, who stated that in the 1980s, Judge Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, were trying to teenagers could then be "gang raped".
Judge Kavanaugh publicly stated that he did not know Ms. Swetnick and described it as "ridiculous and the twilight zone". Mr. Judge denied the charges through a lawyer.
In another example of the frenzy surrounding the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh, the transcripts showed that the committee's staff also interviewed him about a constituent of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who accused Justice Kavanaugh of Raped a woman a boat in 1985 in Newport, RI
In the interview with the committee, Judge Kavanaugh strongly stated that the episode had never occurred.
The Democrats seized the latest charges to call Judge Kavanaugh to retreat, and they hit the Republicans with requests for outside inquiries on these charges. The Republicans, furious at what they see as increasingly insane partisan attacks, have promised to continue the committee vote scheduled for Friday.
But even before Thursday's hearings, it was clear that Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation was under threat. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and key vote, told her colleagues at a private meeting that she was troubled by the latest accusations. Keeping a printed copy of Ms. Swetnick's statement, she asked why the Judicial Committee did not issue a summons for Mr. Judge, who appeared in two separate charges, according to a meeting official.
Collins joined two other Republican senators, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to express reservations about Kavanaugh's entry, which is more than enough to sink him. .
After days of total denial of misconduct, remarks prepared by the committee showed that Judge Kavanaugh would announce a note of contrition on Thursday while he maintained his innocence in case of sexual assault. He intended to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that he sometimes drank too much and "was not perfect" in high school.
"I drank beer with my friends, usually on weekends. Sometimes I had it too much. In hindsight, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now, "Mr. Kavanaugh told the committee, according to the prepared remarks. "But that's not why we're here today. What I am accused of is much more serious than the bad behavior of minors.
[[[[Read the written testimony of Judge Kavanaugh.]
In her own prepared remarks, Dr. Blasey said that she had struggled for weeks to find out if she wanted to have a dark memory that had "haunted her" and that she knew that "it was a nightmare". she was in danger of upsetting her life.
"I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified, "she told the senators, according to the prepared remarks. "I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school."
Directly targeting a central element of the defense by Judge Kavanaugh and Republican allies who claimed that she had to remember the identity of her attacker, Dr. Blasey will say that their groups of friends had "crossed" high school and that they had been attending parties together.
"We did not know each other well, but I knew him and he knew me," she predicts.
Other potentially significant revelations of Dr. Blasey's claims were quickly eclipsed in a day of continuous developments. In particular, they published the handwritten calendars of Judge Kavanaugh's high school days, as well as affidavits by Dr. Blasey's friends and husband and a copy of the polygraph test administered in August on the advice of his lawyers. The test did not reveal any disappointment.
The allies of Dr. Blasey and Judge Kavanaugh have collected letters attesting to their integrity. Protesters prepared for rallies. Obscure threats have invaded the phone lines and inboxes of almost every key player in the drama.
On the floor of the Senate, Mr. Flake delivered a fiery speech, reprimanding both parties for judging women's demands – and Mr. Trump for dismissing Dr. Blasey completely because she had not reported an assault when she was a teenager.
"As we are not informed and indifferent to saying things like that, let alone believing them?" Said Mr Flake about the president, whom he often condemned. "Do we have an idea of the type of message sent, especially to young women?
At the same time, Dr. Blasey's lawyers gave the committee four affidavits – one of Dr. Blasey's husband and three of his friends – indicating that she had told them in recent years that Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted her in high school.
Neither the schedule nor the affidavits prove or disprove the cases that Dr. Blasey or Judge Kavanaugh tried to advance, but the Democratic senators will likely use the calendar to question how truthful Judge Kavanaugh was. And while affidavits suggest that Dr. Blasey's story has been consistent, Republicans are more likely to focus on the lack of contemporary evidence that might corroborate his story.
Judge Kavanaugh intended to use the calendar, a green wall calendar from Northwestern Mutual Audubon 1982, as part of his defense, namely that he did not assault Dr. Blasey did not remember a party like the one she described. There is no entry of this type to note a rally this summer that exactly matches Dr. Blasey's memory.
But the calendar pages of May, June, July, and August contain notes that might be useful to him. He "consulted the judge," an apparent reference to Judge Judge Kavanaugh's friend Judge, whom Dr. Blasey identified as a participant in the assault. On July 1, 1982, he was supposed to go to a friend's house for "skis" with Mr. Judge and "PJ" – probably "brewskis" with Patrick J. Smyth, a classmate of Judge Kavanaugh at Georgetown Prep School. . Blasey as a PC, another student attending the rally where she says she was assaulted.
Dr. Blasey stated that she had not spoken to anyone about the assault at that time for fear that she might have problems. But the affidavits, all signed this week, suggest that Dr. Blasey had spoken to some of his relatives, including her husband, about the episode at various times in recent years.
Russell Ford, Dr. Blasey's husband, said his wife had shared the details of the assault during a therapy session in 2012.
"She said she was trapped in a room and physically restrained by a boy who assaulted her while the other boy was watching," he said.
The details are consistent with the story that Dr. Blasey shared with a Democratic senator this summer and The Washington Post this month. Mr. Ford stated that his wife once again mentioned the name of Judge Kavanaugh in 2017, when Mr. Trump announced that Judge Neil M. Gorsuch would be his candidate for the court.
Dr. Blasey said his therapist took notes during the session, but his lawyers said on Wednesday that they did not intend to publish his medical records due to confidentiality issues.
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