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Grassley extends negotiation deadline for Christine Blasey ford
WASHINGTON — After a tense night of legal brinkmanship, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee late Friday told lawyers for the woman who has accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
Grassley extends negotiation deadline for Christine Blasey ford
He directed his tweet to Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, who has denied the assault and has said he is eager to clear his name.
“Judge Kavanaugh I just granted another extension to Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w the statement she made last week to testify to the senate,” Grassley wrote, using Twitter shorthand. “She shld decide so we can move on I want to hear her. I hope u understand. It’s not my normal approach to b indecisive.”
In an email to the lawyers, aides to Grassley said that they “absolutely must hear by 2:30 p.m.” that Blasey — who also goes by her married name, Ford — has agreed to their terms for testifying. It was not clear precisely what those terms were.
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The late-night missives were the latest twist in a legal tango that has riveted Washington, with a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court hanging in the balance. The back-and-forth has infuriated Trump, who lashed out Friday at Blasey on Twitter, saying that if the attack “was as bad as she says,” she or her parents would have reported it to the authorities when it happened more than 30 years ago.
Blasey, 51, a research psychologist in Northern California, has accused Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed, grinding his body against her’s and muffling her screams at a party when they were teenagers in the early 1980s. She has said that she is willing to testify publicly, although not on Monday, the date Grassley had scheduled a hearing.
Throughout Friday, Blasey’s lawyers and Senate Judiciary Committee aides tried to work out details like how many photographers and television cameras would be in the room, who would ask the questions and what day the session would take place.
But as the workday drew to a close, Grassley announced that the judiciary panel would vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation Monday morning unless negotiators reached an agreement by 10 p.m. Friday. One of Blasey’s lawyers, Debra Katz, accused Grassley’s aides of imposing “aggressive and artificial deadlines” whose “sole purpose is to bully Dr. Ford.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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Sheryl Gay Stolberg © 2018 The New York Times
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