Judge Brett Kavanaugh departs after testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the first day of his confirmation hearing to serve as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court at the Capitol in Washington on Sept. 4, 2018. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
The lawyer who represented Christine Blasey Ford, who made sexual assault allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh before his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, said in a speech earlier in the year that Ford was motivated to come forward to put “an asterisk” on his reputation before he could rule on Roe v. Wade.
Lawyer Debra Katz made the remarks during her speech at the University of Baltimore’s 11th Feminist Legal Theory Conference, “Applied Feminism and #MeToo” in April this year.
A video of the speech, obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, was published with their report on Sept. 4.
“In the aftermath of these hearings, I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court,” Katz said in the video clip. “He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important.” “It is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine,” Katz added.
Ford, a Californian professor, accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in 1982—a claim that was filled with multiple inconsistencies and lacked supporting evidence. She made her claim relying heavily on a polygraph exam she took earlier this year, notes from a therapy session in 2012, and eyewitness testimony. Kavanaugh denied all the allegations.
During her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Ford said that she came forward with the allegations right after Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court because it is her “civic duty.”
“I am here not because I wanted to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school,” she said (pdf).
Christine Blasey Ford (C) is flanked by her attorneys, Debra Katz (L) and Michael Bromwich, as she testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 27, 2018. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Lovelace told the Daily Caller he believes the new information would have called into question what Ford and Katz had previously said and if this was known during the confirmation hearings, the results could have been different. “I think if we knew in September what we know now, there would have been all kinds of questions at the hearing about this,” he told the news outlet, adding that he believes more scrutiny would be placed on what happened during the hearings last year.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Henry Johnson (D-Ga.), sent a letter to the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) on Aug. 6, demanding records related to his service in the White House counsel’s office and his time as White House Staff Secretary. The letter stated that these records should include emails, their attachments, and all office files.
Rep. Collins (R-Ga.) said in response that Nadler’s request falls outside the scope of judicial ethics while also calling it “harassment.” “Senate Dems spent months launching false accusations in an attempt to smear #JusticeKavanaugh’s reputation & block his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, & now House Dems want to follow suit with yet another fishing expedition to tarnish his good name,” Collins wrote.
Epoch Times reporter Masooma Haq contributed to this report.
Janita Kan
Writer
Janita Kan is a former reporter for The Epoch Times.
