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Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are now threatening to move forward immediately on a vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court if Professor Christine Blasey Ford declines to testify on Monday without the FBI investigation into her allegations of sexual assault by the nominee that she has requested.
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Hoping to turn their consideration of Ford’s charges against Kavanaugh into a simple “he said, she said” confrontation that can be quickly dismissed, the Republican strategy has been to rush the confirmation process through as quickly as possible. This strategy was evidenced initially by their refusal to delay the hearings until all of the nominee’s voluminous paper trail from his days as a White House lawyer in the G.W. Bush administration have been made available and was confirmed by their failure to halt proceedings to have the FBI fully investigate Ford’s accusations.
Now, Cristina King, a former classmate of Professor Ford at the exclusive Maryland all-girls Holton-Arms School that she attended when the alleged incident occurred, has come forward through a Facebook post to confirm Ford’s account, raising demands that the FBI conduct an investigation that would interview her and others who may have heard about the assault shortly after it happened.
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Jay Bookman, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, tweeted a copy of the Facebook post from Ms. King, who knew Ford, Kavanaugh, and Mark Judge, the third person in the room during the alleged assault, at the time.
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Her claim that “many of us heard about” the attack in school begs the question as to why the FBI—whose job it is to conduct the background checks on nominees for high federal office—has not yet interviewed the classmates of the people involved to determine whether Kavanaugh has been truthful in his denials.
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This is the letter, posted on Facebook, from a woman who knew Kavanaugh, Judge and Blasey Ford and claims that the attack did happen, that "many of us heard about it in school," and that it was talked about for days afterward.
The FBI should interview her and others. pic.twitter.com/OZmEGP1Q1G— Jay Bookman (@jaybookmanajc) September 19, 2018
Whether the emergence of this new confirmation that lends credibility to Professor Ford’s account of Kavanaugh’s drunken assault will affect the behavior of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee remains to be seen. However, with new information coming forward every day, the pressure on them to delay the hearings—or face retaliation at the midterm ballot boxes from millions of women incensed at yet another credible woman’s accusations of sexual harassment being as ignored as Anita Hill’s were in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation—will surely mount.
The decision they make in either direction will have profound implications on the country moving forward.
