Two men have come forward to tell Senate investigators they, not Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, could have been responsible for the encounter Christine Blasey Ford describes when she says she was sexually assaulted at a high school party 36 years ago.
The Judiciary Committee Republican staff did not release any details about the men, but said each had been interviewed, and one had provided a written statement.
Each of the men described “in some detail” their recollection of their encounter with Ms. Blasey Ford, the GOP staff said in a memo late Wednesday, less than 12 hours before Ms. Blasey Ford is slated to testify about her memories of the assault.
Ms. Blasey Ford, in testimony prepared for Thursday, leaves no room for doubt that it was Judge Kavanaugh who she believes assaulted her. She recalls spending her days at the Columbia Country Club, swimming and practicing diving, and one evening in particular when she went to a party in the area and was pulled into a room by two boys — one of who she says was Judge Kavanaugh.
She says he ran his hands all over her body and tried to take her clothes off, but her one-piece bathing suit under her clothes caused him trouble, and after a tussle with him and one of his friends, Mark Judge, she was able to flee.
“I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to,” she says in the testimony. “But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.”
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Judge Kavanaugh has strenuously denied her allegation, and all three of the others she has identified as being at the house that night have said they cannot corroborate her account.
That’s left senators struggling to resolve what appears to be an intractable he-said, she-said situation.
The Judiciary Committee, charged with considering Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, has tried to reconstruct what it can.
In the lengthy memo Wednesday night the GOP staff said it’s interviewed Judge Kavanaugh three times, each time with the threat of criminal penalties for lying to Congress. He has consistently denied any improper sexual conduct, with Ms. Blasey Ford or several other accusers who have lodged complaints.
None of those other complaints has been substantiated, and in at least one the accuser has reportedly recanted.
Ms. Blasey Ford has rebuffed requests to go through the same interviews.
Meanwhile, the committee memo reveals yet another anonymous complaint lodged against Judge Kavanaugh from someone who signed the letter “Dane Joe, Oceanside CA,” and alleges Judge Kavanaugh and others raped her in the back seat of a car. The letter does not give a place, date or any other details.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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