What to expect from Kavanaugh, Ford at Senate Judiciary hearing

The nation will grind to a halt this morning for the hotly anticipated showdown between US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and sex-assault accuser Christine Blasey Ford.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing is set to kick off at 10 a.m. with opening statements from Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

They’ll be followed by remarks from Ford, who rattled Kavanaugh’s nomination on Sept. 16 with claims that he drunkenly groped her, tried to remove her clothes and put his hand over her mouth to silence her at a party in 1982, when they were both in high school.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Ford’s lawyer released her prepared statement, in which the Palo Alto University psychology professor says she “agonized” over going public but decided to do so after reporters learned she had arranged to send Feinstein a confidential letter dated July 30.

“It was important to me to describe the details of the assault in my own words,” Ford, 51, said in the statement. “I believed he was going to rape me.”

Kavanaugh, too, released his opening statement, in which he repeated phrases from a Monday statement in which he vowed not to withdraw from consideration, and from a TV interview on the Fox News Channel that evening.

“I am not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time. But I have never done that to her or to anyone. I am innocent of this charge,” he wrote.

Kavanaugh, 53, also dismissed subsequent sexual-misconduct allegations dating to his high-school and college years as “far-fetched and odious” claims meant to keep him off the court.

In a twist just hours before the hearing, it emerged late Wednesday that Republicans on the Committee had been talking to two men who each believes he may have been the one who had the encounter with Ford.

One even gave an “in-depth written statement” and said he “believes he, not Judge Kavanuagh, had the encounter in question with Dr. Ford,” according to Fox News. The other man talked to the committee on the phone and made a similar claim, the report said.

Among the other allegations Kavanaugh is facing is one from Yale University classmate Deborah Ramirez, who has said Kavanaugh drunkenly exposed himself to her at a dorm party when they were freshman. Then on Wednesday, Julie Swetnick said he helped “spike” drinks at high-school parties where girls were “gang-raped.”

Neither of those women has been granted permission to testify, but senators are not limited in what questions they can ask, which means Kavanaugh is likely to face cross-examination by Democrats over those allegations.

The hearing will be televised live on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and C-SPAN3. One or more Democrats are likely to try to postpone the proceeding, as California Sen. Kamala Harris did when she repeatedly interrupted Grassley’s opening statement on Sept. 4, during Day One of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.

At Ford’s request, each committee member will get just five minutes to question her and, later, Kavanaugh.

With 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the committee, that adds up to 1 hour, 45 minutes in the hot seat for each witness.

The senators, alternating by party, will have the option to yield some or all of their time to another senator or to Rachel Mitchell, a veteran sex-crimes prosecutor from Maricopa County, Ariz., who was hired by the committee’s Republicans. Grassley said Mitchell’s presence was intended “to depoliticize the process and get to the truth, instead of grandstanding and giving senators an opportunity to launch their presidential campaigns.”

Mitchell will also help the all-male Republican committee members avoid a repeat of the 1991 confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Back then, Republican — including Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is still on the committee — grilled Anita Hill over her claims of sexual harassment by Thomas.

Committee member John Kennedy (R-La.) said senators faced a high-wire act in taking the allegations against Kavanaugh seriously while also doing their best to vet them.

“This is no country for creepy old men — or creepy young men or creepy middle-age men,” he told reporters inside the US Capitol. “But this is also no country to deny people due process.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said he would ask his own questions, and planned to explore “the image of Judge Kavanaugh as a choir boy or frat boy.”

“I think part of the challenge that Judge Kavanaugh faces is the very real tension between the way he’s presenting himself and what these increasing allegations suggest,” Coons said.

Additional reporting by Lauren Sarner