U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Kavanaugh, posted a video from the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing.
“Democrats want you to believe that the role of the FBI investigation is to determine guilt/innocence, analyze 30-year-old yearbook jargon, and determine how much beer Judge Kavanaugh drank in college,” Hatch said in the Twitter post, “That’s not how any of this works.”
“Ask Chairman Biden,” he added with a video of Joe Biden in the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing.
In a Sept. 27 Senate hearing, Palo Alto University professor Christine Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault in the summer of 1982. Kavanaugh denied the accusation vehemently. Shortly after the hearing, Republican senators agreed to launch an FBI supplemental investigation before the Senate floor votes for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
The memory of Anita Hill’s accusation of the then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991, was refreshed for many when Ford’s accusation emerged. Hill—who was also a professor—accused Thomas of sexual harassment and it became the focus of his Senate hearing.
The video shows exactly what the Democrats did at the Senate hearing on Oct. 11, 1991, when an FBI report was available.
“So when people wave an FBI report before you, understand they do not, they do not reach conclusions. They do not make, as my friend points out more accurately, they do not make recommendations,” Biden—the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee—can be seen saying in the video while waving a document, likely the FBI report.
Hatch Urges FBI to Meets Designated Timeline
In a Sept. 29 letter, Hatch urged FBI director Christopher Wray to ensure the Kavanaugh investigation meets a designated timeline. He requested the FBI notifies the White House Counsel’s Office “immediately” if any witness or their attorneys attempt to delay the investigation or decline to cooperate.Hatch said he had this concern because of the events which led up to Ford’s public hearing.
“According to Dr. Ford, she would have preferred to have been interviewed in California, away from the spectacle of a public hearing,” he said, “But her lawyers apparently refused to convey to their client numerous offers by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to conduct a public or private interview in a location of her choosing. The lawyers’ refusal led directly to a public hearing, against Dr. Ford’s express wishes.”
New Memo Highlights Inconsistencies in Ford’s Testimony
Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor chosen by Republican senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Ford and Kavanaugh, sent a memo to the Republican senators on Sept. 30, noting the many inconsistencies with Ford’s account that were revealed through questioning during the public hearing on Sept. 27.
Mitchell noted that the memo “contains my own independent assessment of Dr. Ford’s allegations, based upon my independent review of the evidence and my nearly 25 years experience as a career prosecutor of sex-related and other crimes in Arizona.”
Mitchell wrote that a “he said, she said,” case is difficult to prove, but that Ford’s accusation “is even weaker than that.”
“Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations of failed to corroborate them,” she wrote. “For the reasons discussed below [in the memo], I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence.”
