In amoral political terms, Senate Republicans have been skillful in handling Christine Blasey’s Ford’s allegations that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school.
Last Monday, when Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, announced that a hearing on Blasey’s allegations would be held in a week, it wasn’t immediately clear that neither she nor her lawyer had been consulted. “They sent out a notice of a hearing before they contacted her,” Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told me. Then, when Blasey and her lawyers balked at Republican terms, Republicans acted as if she was being irrational and going back on her word.
“They’re all piling on to her, as though it’s the most outrageous thing in the world to ask for an FBI investigation,” Hirono said.
Blasey has been put in a nightmarish position. She was terrified of the backlash that going public would bring. Now, reportedly in hiding with her family amid death threats, she’s living what seems like her worst-case scenario. People on the right, including the president’s son, are mocking her. And as she adjusts to her radically changed circumstances, Republicans subjected her to an ultimatum. She could agree by last Friday to recount one of her life’s defining traumas to hostile men on extremely short notice or lose her chance to have the Senate consider her story.
Now, Blasey has to decide whether she wants to pit her word against Kavanaugh’s before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans are refusing to subpoena Kavanaugh’s old classmate Mark Judge, who Blasey said witnessed the assault, and whose lawyer wrote, in a letter to the Judiciary Committee, that he does “not wish to speak publicly regarding the incidents” described by Blasey. The lack of an FBI investigation means there will be no neutral factual record.
Blasey has been given the choice of testifying publicly or privately, but either way, it’s clear that Republicans want to undermine her, not find the truth. “Unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh,” Mike Davis, the Judiciary Committee’s chief counsel for nominations, tweeted, and then deleted, early Thursday.
Of course she doesn’t want to do it like this. Of course she shouldn’t have to. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, was right when, on Wednesday, she called the hearing a “sham.” What is being asked of Blasey is deeply unfair. Nevertheless, I really hope she does it.
As I write this, The Times has reported that Blasey’s lawyers told the Judiciary Committee that she’s willing to testify next week – though not on Monday – as long as they can agree on “terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.” It’s hard to imagine what excuse Republicans will come up with for not accommodating her, but I fear they’ll find something.
That’s because Republicans, by most accounts, don’t want this hearing to happen. All the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are men, and they appear anxious about what it will look like when they interrogate a woman about a teenage sexual assault.
It’s in Republicans’ interests to make this as hard for Blasey as possible. If she doesn’t testify, and no other evidence emerges against Kavanaugh, Republicans will have just enough cover to get his nomination through. Should she take the terrifying step of appearing before America and speaking, under oath, before antagonistic senators, her story will be much harder to dismiss. It will no longer be a vague accusation from the ether, but one attached to a reputable, respected professional making it at great personal risk.
We already know that Kavanaugh does not come off as particularly honest under tough questioning; recall how flustered he became when Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, asked him whether he’d ever discussed the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, with anyone at Donald Trump’s personal lawyer’s law firm. Blasey had the conviction to take a polygraph and ask for the FBI to verify her story, though she surely knows that lying to the FBI is a crime. I think that conviction would come through, even at a rigged hearing.
Obviously, that’s easy for me to say – I’m not staring down a political juggernaut bent on my destruction. I understand why Democratic senators don’t feel that they can urge Blasey to come to an agreement with Republicans. “It was already courageous enough for her to come forward,” said Hirono. “And I think when she said that ‘I am willing to testify,’ I think she kind of had an expectation that there would be some fairness here.”
There won’t be. But if she does it anyway, a lot of Republicans will be nearly as frightened as she is.
Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for The New York Times.
