Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, comes out swinging
Over the past week we’ve seen Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh accused of attempted rape by a woman who was keeping her identity anonymous. As of today, by her own choice, she’s no longer anonymous. Say hello to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Stanford University, who has come forward as the author of the letter which made the accusations against Kavanaugh. She’s coming out swinging today.
Christine Blasey Ford has written an article for the Washington Post in which she spells out the details of the incident in question, which took place when she and Kavanaugh were attending separate nearby high schools. The details of the alleged attempted rape are horrifying: “I thought he might inadvertently kill me … He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
How will this impact the fate of Kavanaugh’s nomination? As is so often the case when it comes to Republican Party decision making, this unfortunately isn’t going to come down to right and wrong. Instead it’s going to come down to whether certain vulnerable GOP Senators want to take the political risk of putting an alleged rapist on the Supreme Court, now that his accuser has a name and a face and a respected position in society. She’s also passed a polygraph, she told her husband about the incident years ago, and she also told a psychologist about it.
Now we’ll see if the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are willing to take the risk of rubber stamping Brett Kavanaugh this week, knowing that this is going to turn so ugly, he might not survive his full Senate hearings. All eyes are now on Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, along with certain other GOP Senators, whose careers are over if they vote for this guy. They can kill this nomination whether the Republican leadership wants them to or not.
