Blasey reaches deal to testify at Kavanaugh hearing

After days of intense and closely watched legal wrangling, lawyers for the woman, Christine Blasey Ford, reached final agreement with committee representatives Sunday for Blasey to testify. While several details — including whether Republicans will use an outside lawyers to question her — remain unsettled, a spokesman for the committee said its chairman, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, considers the negotiations over, and Blasey’s lawyers said the hearing would go on no matter how those details are resolved.

“Despite actual threats to her safety and her life, Dr. Ford believes it is important for senators to hear directly from her about the sexual assault committed against her,” her lawyers, Debra S. Katz, Lisa J. Banks and Michael R. Bromwich, said in a statement Sunday morning, adding that while some logistical and other details were not yet settled, “they will not impede the hearing taking place.”

But not long after the agreement was reached, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, wrote to Grassley requesting “an immediate postponement of any further proceedings related to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh,” citing a second accusation of misconduct that surfaced against him Sunday and asking that the allegation be referred to the FBI.

If the hearing remains on course, Blasey will appear Thursday before a committee of 21 senators for questioning that could carry unmistakable echoes of the 1991 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by law professor Anita F. Hill. The Thomas hearings riveted the nation, infuriating women across the country and spurring hundreds of them to run for office. The hearing with Blasey, coming at the height of the #MeToo movement, promises to be a similar spectacle.

The on-again, off-again talks — with an appointment to the nation’s highest court in the balance — have consumed official Washington, and thrown confirmation proceedings for Kavanaugh, who has vigorously denied Blasey’s allegations, into turmoil. Until recently, Kavanaugh’s confirmation seemed all but assured; Blasey’s testimony has the potential to be a fatal blow.

At least one Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Sunday that it was unlikely that Blasey’s testimony would change his mind. He accused Democrats of taking advantage of her.

“I want to listen to Dr. Ford. I feel sorry for her. I think she’s being used here,” he said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding, “I’m not going to play a game here and tell you this will wipe out his entire life, because if nothing changes, it won’t with me.”

The hearing will invariably explore Kavanaugh’s upbringing in the exclusive world of prep schools in suburban Washington. Both Kavanaugh and Blasey attended private schools, and she has said that the judge and a friend of his were “stumbling drunk” when the assault occurred. Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said Sunday that questions about Kavanaugh’s high school alcohol consumption were bound to come up.

“Well, it’s certainly relevant to the whole conversation,” Durbin said on the ABC program “This Week.” “Dr. Ford has said that they were stumbling drunk at the time that this occurred. And there have been a lot of things said about the alcohol that was consumed by the judge as well as by others in his school. That has to be part of any relevant questioning.”

In a preview of his defense, Kavanaugh planned Sunday to hand over to the Judiciary Committee calendars from the summer of 1982 that do not contain evidence of a party similar to the one described by Blasey. His team plans to argue that the calendar pages represent a piece of evidence that fails to corroborate Blasey’s account, according to a person familiar with the defense.

But the calendar pages from June, July and August of that year, which were reviewed by The New York Times, also in no way disprove her accusation. Along with a list of statements from other potential witnesses insisting they do not remember the episode, the pages only reinforced Sunday that Kavanaugh’s fate will rest in the hands of individual senators who must decide whose account they believe.

Senators looking to confirm or refute the allegations will face a nearly impossible task. Complicating matters, Blasey has said she does not recall the specific date or location of the house where the alleged incident occurred, though she believes it was during the summer of 1982.

Kavanaugh’s prospects were further clouded on Sunday when The New Yorker reported on a new allegation of sexual impropriety: A woman who went to Yale with Kavanaugh said that, during a drunken dormitory party their freshman year, he exposed himself to her, thrust his penis into her face and caused her to touch it without her consent.

In a statement to the magazine, Kavanaugh denied the allegation from the woman, Deborah Ramirez, and called it “a smear, plain and simple.” The New Yorker did not confirm with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was at the party.

The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.

“It is time to set politics aside,” Feinstein wrote. “We must ensure that a thorough and fair investigation is conducted before moving forward.”

Democrats had also made such demands in the case of Blasey, but Republicans repeatedly rejected them. An aide to Grassley said committee Republicans intended to look into Ramirez’s accusation.

The talks between Blasey’s lawyers and committee aides Sunday morning produced an agreement on the general shape of the hearing, a person briefed on the negotiations said. It will be open to the public; there will be breaks at 45-minute intervals, or on request; and while Blasey prefers that Kavanaugh testify first, she will accept that she might have to go first. There will also be enhanced security for Blasey, who has received death threats, and she will have two lawyers at the witness table with her.

But Republicans have repeatedly rebuffed requests by Blasey’s team to subpoena Mark Judge, a high school friend of Kavanaugh’s who Blasey has said was in the room at the time of the assault, or any others said to have been at the gathering where the alleged assault occurred. Judge has said he knows of no such incident.

Two other potential witnesses identified by Blasey — who she says were not in the room at the time of the assault — have provided statements to the Judiciary Committee to the same effect. One man, Patrick J. Smyth, told committee Republicans in a letter last week that he had “no knowledge of the party in question.” And a woman, Leland Keyser, told the Republicans through a lawyer that she “does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”

She later told The Washington Post that she believed Blasey’s story anyway. No one answered the door when a reporter knocked at Keyser’s suburban Maryland home Saturday.

Republicans, including White House officials, have quickly seized on the potential witness statements in an effort to undercut Blasey’s testimony. But her lawyers argue that at least in the case of Keyser, the statement is all but meaningless; she was not in the room when Blasey says she was assaulted, they said, and Blasey did not tell her, or any others, about the matter at the time.

Blasey’s lawyers have also asked for outside witnesses, including two trauma experts and the former FBI agent who administered a polygraph examination to Blasey, the person familiar with the call said. Republicans have denied those requests, but Democrats say they will find a way to publicize those witnesses’ views.

Blasey “has agreed to move forward with a hearing even though the committee has refused to subpoena Mark Judge,” her lawyers’ statement added. “They have also refused to invite other witnesses who are essential for a fair hearing that arrives at the truth about the sexual assault.”

But perhaps the biggest sticking point is whether senators on the Judiciary Committee will question Blasey themselves, or use an outside lawyer or a committee aide, most likely a woman. In a letter sent Friday night to Blasey’s lawyers, Grassley said Republicans “reserve the option to have female staff attorneys, who are sensitive to the particulars of Dr. Ford’s allegations and are experienced investigators, question both witnesses.”

All the Republicans on the panel are men. In a midterm election season where Republicans are already struggling to connect with female voters, party leaders desperately want to avoid images of an all-male panel ganging up on a woman who says she experienced a sexual assault. There are four women on the Judiciary Committee, but all are Democrats.

Lawyers for Blasey have strongly opposed having an outside questioner, arguing that it could give the hearing a prosecutorial tone. And Senate Democrats have indicated that, no matter whom Republicans choose to question Blasey, when she is questioned by Democrats, senators will be doing the talking.

“We were told no decision has been made on this important issue, even though various senators have been dismissive of her account and should have to shoulder their responsibility to ask her questions,” Blasey’s lawyers said in their statement. “Nor were we told when we would have that answer or answers to the other unresolved issues.”

But George Hartmann, a spokesman for Grassley, said, “As far as we’re concerned, everything is resolved. The hearing is set for Thursday under the conditions outlined in the chairman’s letter on Friday.”

Mike Davis, Grassley’s chief counsel for judicial nominations, wrote in his own message to the lawyers Sunday that some of their concerns went against standard committee procedure.

“As with any witness who comes before the Senate, the Senate Judiciary Committee cannot hand over its constitutional duties to attorneys for outside witnesses,” he wrote. “The committee determines which witnesses to call, how many witnesses to call, in what order to call them, and who will question them. These are nonnegotiable.”

With Thursday’s hearing locked in, Grassley made public for the first time Sunday night Blasey’s July 30 letter to Feinstein, which laid out her allegation and eventually precipitated her story becoming public. At Blasey’s request, Feinstein kept the letter a secret from other senators for weeks, but after Blasey identified herself last week to The Washington Post, little of its content remained unknown.

Blasey’s lawyers had agreed to the letter’s release earlier Sunday, and also gave approval to make public another private letter penned late last week by Blasey to Grassley underscoring her wish to share her story directly with senators, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. Grassley had not yet released that letter.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Blasey reaches deal to testify at Kavanaugh hearing

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