WASHINGTON DC — Lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, have sent the Senate Judiciary Committee sworn and signed declarations from four people who say they have known of her allegation well before it became public.
Meanwhile, Kavanaugh’s lawyers have sent the committee pages from his 1982 calendar to bolster his claim that he wasn’t at the house party where Ford alleges the assault took place.
The documents, first reported by USA Today, are likely to figure prominently in Thursday’s high-stakes hearing, in which both Ford and Kavanaugh will testify before the committee.
Ford’s husband says she first told him the details of the alleged assault in couple’s therapy in 2012, and a friend, Keith Koegler, said Ford discussed the matter with him in 2016 and mentioned Kavanaugh’s name in June of this year, the documents show. None of the four signed declarations is from a person with first-hand knowledge of the incident or eyewitness accounts, but all say they knew of her accusation before it was made public and before Kavanaugh was nominated in July.
Kavanaugh’s lawyers sent the committee five pages from his calendar from the summer of 1982. The pages of the calendar show that Kavanaugh listed his chores, sleepovers with friends, a beach trip and some parties that summer.
Ford has told The Washington Post that she believes the alleged assault — in which she says Kavanaugh pushed her into a bedroom, pinned her down, held his hand over her mouth as she tried to scream and attempted to remove her clothes — took place in the summer of 1982. Kavanaugh’s attorneys plan to present the calendars as evidence that he did not attend a party Ford describes in her allegation.
But in her letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Ford wrote that the incident took place “in the early 1980s,” leaving open the possibility that it was not in 1982.
Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied the allegation.
Ford’s declarations of support
In one of the declarations in support of Ford, her husband, Russell, writes that he found out about his wife’s sexual assault “around the time we got married” but that he did not know the details until 2012 when she told him her alleged attacker was Kavanaugh. He also said she was “very conflicted” about telling her story publicly.
The other three declarations are from friends of Ford who say that she told them about the assault before Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. Adela Gildo-Mazzon said Ford told her about the alleged assault in June 2013.
“During our meal, Christine was visibly upset, so I asked her what was going on,” Gildo-Mazzon writes in her declaration. “Christine told me she had been having a hard day because she was thinking about an assault she experienced when she was much younger. She said she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge. She told me she had been trapped in a room with two drunken guys, and that she had escaped, ran away and hid.”
Two other friends of Ford’s say that she told them a similar story — one in 2016 and one in 2017.
Kavanaugh’s calendars
Detailed on the five pages of Kavanaugh’s calendars for the summer of 1982 are many typical summer activities for a high school student. He went to a Washington Bullets NBA game and to the movies. He notes that he was grounded a few weekends and that “football camp starts” in August 1982.
The calendars also show that he listed several parties that summer — including the dates and places. Ford’s name is not mentioned on the calendar, but a “Mark” and a “Judge” show up. Ford says that Mark Judge was in the bedroom during the alleged assault. Judge has said he has no memory of the alleged sexual assault in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
