Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, recounted the attack to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, telling senators that she remembered Kavanaugh and another boy laughing with each other while she feared that Kavanaugh was going to rape her at a gathering at a suburban Washington, D.C., home.
Ford, now a 51-year-old professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, testified for the first time about the events.
Kavanaugh, who is to appear later today, has been accused of sexual misconduct by three other women since Ford came forward. One accusation from 1998 is anonymous. Kavanaugh denies the allegations.
Democrats are questioning Ford themselves but Republicans on the committee, all men, have hired a lawyer to do the questioning for them: Rachel Mitchell, an experienced sex crimes prosecutor.
Here are some notable moments from the first part of the hearing, which has threatened to derail what previously seemed a smooth path to confirmation for Kavanaugh.
“Uproarious Laughter”
Ford, after describing the alleged attack in her opening statement, was asked for her strongest memory of what had happened at the gathering.
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense,” she answered.
“They were laughing with each other,” Ford said of Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, the second man she said was in the bedroom when Kavanaugh pushed her onto a bed, began grinding his body against her, tried to undress her and covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
“And you were the object of the laughter?” Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democrat from Vermont, asked.
“I was underneath one of them while the two laughed — two friends having a really good time with one another,” Ford said.
Meeting Mark Judge Again
Ford testified that she encountered Mark Judge, now an author and journalist, after the attack while at the Potomac Village Safeway with her mother. Because she was a teenager, she wanted to enter through a different door than her mother, she said.
“I chose the wrong door,” she said, and she met Judge arranging the shopping carts.
She said hello and noted that he was very uncomfortable saying hello back.
“His face was white,” she said.
Ford, whose account has been criticized because of a lack of some details, said she thought she could better try to determine when the attack occurred if she knew when Judge had worked at the Safeway.
Democrats on the committee have demanded that the FBI investigate the allegations and that Judge testify before the committee but they have been so far rebuffed by the majority of Republican members.
“Mark Judge should be subpoenaed from his Bethany Beach hideaway,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democrat from Illinois, said.
A Washington Post reporter this week tracked down Judge to a friend’s house in Bethany Beach, Delaware.
“How’d you find me?” Judge asked the reporter.
Judge’s lawyer told the Post that Judge was a recovering alcoholic under unbelievable stress who for the sake of his health needed to get away and take care of himself.
Charges of a Cover-Up
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, asked Ford about her assessment that she could better determine when the gathering took place if she knew when Judge worked at the Safeway grocery store.
“Would you like Mark Judge to be interviewed in connection with the background investigation and the serious credible allegations that you make?” he asked.
“That would be my preference,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s really up to me but I certainly would feel like I could be more helpful to everyone if I knew the date that he worked at the Safeway so I could give a more specific date of the assault.”
“Well it’s not up to you,” Blumenthal said. “It’s up to the president of the United States and his failure to ask for an FBI investigation in my view is tantamount to a cover-up.”
Taking a Lie Detector Test
Ford took a polygraph as part of her allegations against Kavanaugh and the location for the test, the Baltimore Washington International Airport, became the subject of one line of questioning.
“Why was that location chosen for the polygraph?” Mitchell asked.
“I had left my grandmother's funeral at Fort Lincoln Cemetery that day and was on tight schedule to get a plane to Manchester, New Hampshire,” Ford answered. “So he was willing to come to me, which was appreciated.”
“So he administered a polygraph on the day you attended your grandmother's funeral?” Mitchell asked.
“Correct,” she answered. “Or it might have been the next day. I spent the night in the hotel so I don't remember the exact day.”
Her lawyers said that they had paid for the polygraph, as was routine, and were working pro bono, but Ford could not say whether costs would be eventually passed on to her.
“I'm not sure yet,” Ford said. “I haven't taken a look at all of the costs involved in this. We've relocated now twice so I haven't kept track of all of that paperwork, but I'm sure I have a lot of work to do to catch up on all of that later.”
She said as part of another exchange with Mitchell that she was aware some GoFundMe accounts had been created but did not know how to access them.
“Several what?” Mitchell asked.
“GoFundMe sites that have raised money primarily for our security detail so I'm not even quite sure how to collect that money or how to distribute it yet,” Ford said. “I haven't been able to focus on that.”
“When we left off…”
The hearing’s format was less than conducive for smooth questioning by Mitchell. The Republican senators had all turned over their five minutes to Mitchell, but because Republicans and Democrats alternated, Mitchell had to repeatedly break off to allow a Democrat to go. Democrats, meanwhile, stressed repeatedly that the hearing was not a trial.
At the end, Mitchell asked Ford if she was aware of the best way to interview victims of trauma.
“Would you believe me if I told you that there’s no study that says this setting, in five-minute increments, is the best way to do that?” Mitchell asked to laughter.
Mitchell said that the recommended approach was one-on-one with a trained interviewer in a private setting, and asked whether anyone had advised such an interview. Ford said no one had.
“Instead, you were advised to get an attorney and take a polygraph, is that right?” Mitchell asked.
“Many people advised me to get an attorney,” Ford said. “Once I had an attorney, my attorney and I discussed using the polygraph.”
“And instead of submitting to an interview in California, we're having a hearing here today in five-minute increments, is that right?”
“I agree that's what was agreed upon by the collegial group here,” Ford said, and with that the questioning came to a conclusion.