By refusing to call other witnesses, or enlist the FBI in a fact-finding investigation, or summon relevant witnesses, Senate Republicans have systematically steered the hearing into a cul-de-sac of competing memories between Ford and Kavanaugh. The plan to vote on the nomination within days gives away the game: No one would schedule votes that quickly if they were committed to fully evaluating whatever testimony Ford provides on Thursday, much less the other charges confronting Kavanaugh.

The allegations from Avenatti’s client, Julie Swetnick, could scramble Republicans’ decision-making. But even if the Senate pushes forward and confirms Kavanaugh, the battle over his selection is virtually guaranteed to continue. Indeed, it’s already possible to identify at least four distinct rounds of future electoral and legislative conflict over Kavanaugh if he’s confirmed.

The 2018 election: The Kavanaugh controversy erupted as polls were already showing a threat to GOP candidates this fall, in the form of an intense backlash against Trump that’s fueling unprecedented deficits among college-educated white women and energized turnout among African American women. Democrats have positioned themselves to benefit from that energy by nominating a record number of women in House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections.

Republicans have feared that if they don’t confirm Kavanaugh, they will depress turnout among their base supporters. But elevating him to the Supreme Court amid these allegations risks compounding their problems with the female voters already most hostile to Trump (partly for his own history of alleged sexual abuse). Even before Ford testifies, nearly three-fifths of college-educated white women opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a recent Fox News poll. And while a plurality of non-college-educated white women backed Kavanaugh in that survey, a strong performance from Ford could strain that conviction. The fierce recoil from Trump among college-educated white women is the single greatest source of Republican vulnerability in House races this year; if the party’s defenses among blue-collar white women also crack, a difficult election night could turn disastrous.

A House investigation: Democrats frustrated that Republicans have refused to fully investigate the allegations against Kavanaugh—or examine evidence suggesting that he provided false or misleading testimony on multiple issues in previous confirmation hearings—would get another chance to revisit those questions if the party wins the House majority in November. Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a Democratic group that advocates on judicial nominations, says it is “100 percent certain” a Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee “would seek to reopen investigations that Republicans during this process have refused to conduct.”</s>WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorneys for Deborah Ramirez are arguing with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee over how to bring forward her allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Ramirez lawyer John Clune tells ABC's "Good Morning America" that Republican staff members were a no-show on a scheduled conference call to discuss her allegations.

Ramirez has told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when they were students at Yale. Kavanaugh denies the allegation.

Republicans for the committee say they've asked for evidence from Ramirez to back up her claims. They say none has been provided.

The committee chairman, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, says that if Ramirez submits testimony and evidence, "we can decide how to proceed."</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Judiciary Chairman Grassley offers apology to Ford and Kavanaugh, urges ‘show of civility’ at hearing.</s>A day after a bruising day-long hearing with testimony from Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, Judiciary Committee votes on advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate</s>Inside the White House on Sunday afternoon, the team of Brett M. Kavanaugh had been scrambling to shut down the latest disaster in what once seemed a certain nomination: a coming New Yorker story outlining a new accusation of harassment against Kavanaugh.

The Drudge Report had already teased the piece — “Another Woman?” — atop the site just an hour before publication. This, following a Washington Post story a week prior in which Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Kavanaugh had pinned her to a bed during a high school party and attempted to assault her. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.

That night, the White House team huddled to figure out what to do next. They consulted with Kavanaugh about whether he would agree to the unprecedented move, and yet one that fit the media-driven moment of the era of President Trump: an on-camera interview to broadcast his version of the story, in his own words. He had already discussed the possibility with his wife, Ashley, and they both quickly agreed. He didn’t need much persuading, according to a person who spoke with him at the time.

It was a pretty easy decision, according to one person with knowledge of the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations. Their goal was for Kavanaugh to get his story out in his own words.

The White House discussed several options that night and the following morning. For the interview they considered broadcast outlets as well as the Trump administration’s standby: Fox News.

It didn’t take long to hit on the right interviewer: Martha MacCallum. The 54-year-old mother of three and host of a popular early-evening show on Fox News, “The Story With Martha MacCallum,” represented exactly the demographic the White House feels it is trying to convince of Kavanaugh’s fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. MacCallum had developed a reputation on the news side of Fox News as a measured interviewer.

She had put in a request to interview Kavanaugh in the summer and was chosen because White House officials considered her credible as someone who could ask about coming of age in the 1980s. Part of the calculus in selecting Fox News for the interview was an effort to speak directly to their conservative viewers, this person said.

[Kavanaugh nomination: Judge says he is victim of ‘character assassination’ as third woman comes forward]

MacCallum told Variety that she learned at 9 a.m. the day of the interview that her request to speak to Kavanaugh had been granted.

A White House communications staffer spoke with MacCallum’s staff shortly before the interview. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Bill Shine, White House deputy chief of staff in charge of communications, were also informed of the interview plan. Shine briefed the president, who asked to speak to Kavanaugh to voice his support directly for him before the interview taping on Monday afternoon.

That afternoon, Kavanaugh sat next to his wife, lips pursed, brows furrowed. “I am looking for a fair process,” he said.

MacCallum’s interview started almost right off the bat by asking Ashley Kavanaugh what the past weeks had been like for her. She had received death threats, MacCallum noted. “How does that feel?”

Ashley Kavanaugh replied that the process had been “incredibly difficult. It’s harder than we imagined, and we imagined it might be hard. But at the end of the day, our faith is strong and we know that we’re on the right path.”

MacCallum asked Kavanaugh about allegations from Michael Avenatti, the attorney and Trump critic, that Kavanaugh and Mark Judge targeted women with alcohol and drugs to allow men to subsequently gang-rape them. (On Wednesday, Avenatti revealed that he is representing Julie Swetnick, who said Kavanaugh was physically abusive toward girls in high school and present at a house party in 1982 at which she says she was the victim of a gang rape.)

Kavanaugh’s response to MacCallum — which he had prepped in advance with White House officials including Shine and lawyer Donald McGahn — was to point out that he went to an all-boys Catholic high school where he focused on academics, athletics, going to church and service projects.

“I did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter,” he told MacCallum.

In the Variety interview, MacCallum said Kavanaugh’s feelings were “very palpable.” “It was very clear to me that underneath it all, he was choking up,” MacCallum said.

Kavanaugh’s defenders point to his admission in the interview that he drank and did things in high school that might cause him to “cringe a bit, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about an allegation of sexual assault. I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone.”

Kavanaugh’s defense of his character was forceful and also controversial, as was the choice of MacCallum and Fox News for the interview.

Before the show aired, MacCallum was attacked on Twitter for her defense years ago of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes. Soledad O’Brien, a former CNN and NBC anchor, noted that in July 2016, after Gretchen Carlson sued Roger Ailes for sexual harassment and retaliation, MacCallum said: “Roger is such a terrific boss. I don’t like to see anything that reflects negatively on him.”

In response to O’Brien, MacCallum pointed out that other prominent women who worked with other television figures such as Matt Lauer, Tom Brokaw, Charlie Rose and Leslie Moonves “have spoken up initially to support them because they were surprised at the allegations.”

MacCallum was hardly the most high-profile Fox personality to stand up for Ailes.

Bill Shine, then Ailes’s second-in-command, was a key figure in rallying women to speak out for “Team Roger,” a term Shine coined. According to former Fox contributor Julie Roginsky’s lawsuit against Ailes, Fox News and Shine — which has since been settled — she alleged that Shine dismissed her concerns about Ailes’s harassment and retaliation.

Shine’s part in the effort to rally support for Ailes ended up backfiring, as some women at Fox felt pressured to voice support for Ailes and ended up speaking to the law firm investigaing him . Shine was pushed out of Fox News in May 2017.

By one measure, media strategy countering the allegations against Kavanaugh was a win for both Fox and Kavanaugh: MacCallum’s interview with him was her highest-rated episode to date, grabbing an average 610,000 viewers in the news demographic of adults 25 to 54 years old.

And MacCallum won praise from unlikely corners. “Martha MacCallum is pressing Kavanaugh more than I would have guessed,” said Brian Fallon, a former Hillary Clinton campaign official, on Twitter.

Inside the White House, the MacCallum interview was also seen by Trump as a success, according to two people who spoke with him about it. And the team prepping Kavanaugh felt that the broad goal — to get the judge on camera, using words that could be quoted the following day — was achieved.

Never mind that Kavanaugh’s representation of his college experience was so chaste that it spurred some of his former classmates to speak to The Washington Post about how he regularly drank to excess. “Brett was a sloppy drunk,” one of his former college classmates told The Post.

“Kavanaugh’s Fox News interview now looks like it was perhaps the worst move he could have made,” Garance Franke-Ruta, the Washington editor of Yahoo News tweeted Wednesday.</s>And she unequivocally denied having been put up by anyone: "I am an independent person and I am no one's pawn."

Clad in a navy-blue suit that echoed those of the largely male committee members, Blasey Ford spent the morning detailing her story and ably fielding questions — alternatively from Democrats and from Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona sex-crimes prosecutor tapped by Republicans to query the witness on their behalf.

But easily the most compelling moments of the morning came during an exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy, who thanked Blasey Ford for her testimony, which he described as an inspiration to survivors of sexual assault in particular and men and women alike across the United States.

"Bravery is contagious," Leahy said. "We owe you a debt of gratitude for that."

Kavanaugh, however, also rose to the occasion with a combination of ferocity, defiance, compassion and emotion.

"This is a circus," he declared, gesticulating at the Democratic side of the dais as he all but accused them of masterminding a "calculated and orchestrated political hit."

"This confirmation process has become a national disgrace" and the allegations have left his good name and his family "totally and permanently destroyed," he added, erasing any notion that he had any intention of withdrawing from the nomination.

"You may defeat me in the final vote, but you'll never get me to quit," Kavanaugh said. "Never."

His early performance stood in stark contrast to Blasey Ford's more measured, tempered testimony, during which her expertise in clinical psychology peeked through — notably when Leahy asked her to recount the moment during the alleged assault that's proven most difficult to forget.

"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter," she replied, her voice clear but close to breaking. "The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense ... two friends having a really good time with one another."

And when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked how certain she was that Kavanaugh was her attacker, she replied, without hesitation: "100 per cent."

Several hours of riveting testimony soon began to make it plain that Kavanaugh's nomination was facing a steep uphill climb — even GOP-friendly Fox News Channel host Chris Wallace had to acknowledge it had been "a disaster" for Republicans.

The Republican line of questioning was also getting mixed reviews.

Mitchell lingered at one point on Blasey Ford's self-professed fear of flying, which her lawyers had used in part to justify her reluctance to travel to Washington to testify. Ford acknowledged Thursday a discomfort with airplanes, but said she was "able to get up the gumption" to travel for the hearing, and admitted having flown for vacations.

There were also a number of questions about the polygraph test Blasey Ford took after going public and who paid for it. Her lawyers eventually told the hearing that they footed the bill, and that it was was standard procedure for them to do so.

Following Blasey Ford's testimony, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham excoriated Democrats in general and Feinstein in particular for waiting so long to make the committee aware of Blasey Ford's allegations. And while he found her a credible witness, so too is Kavanaugh himself, he said.

"I didn't find her allegations to be corroborated against Mr. Kavanaugh," said Graham, adding that any investigation by law enforcement would never secure a conviction, given a lack of details about when and where the alleged attack occurred.

"I don't doubt something happened to her, but she is saying it's Brett Kavanaugh when she can't tell me the house, she can't tell me the city, she can't tell me the month of the year. He's saying he didn't do it," Graham said.

"So here's what you do when you have an emotional accusation and an emotional denial: you use the rule of law, (and) the presumption of innocence attaches to the accused."

Graham continued to accuse the Democrats of playing a "political game" aimed at stalling the vote on Kavanaugh's nomination until after the midterms, when Republicans are widely expected to lose the members of Congress they will need to get him confirmed.

"This is all delay," he said.

"I'm not going to reward people for playing a political game, I think, with her life. She is just as much a victim of this as I think Brett Kavanaugh. Because somebody betrayed her trust, and we know who she gave the letter to. And the people who betrayed her trust, they owe her an apology."</s>(CNN) — South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham forcefully defended Brett Kavanaugh against an allegation of sexual assault during a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday and accused Democrats of wanting to “destroy” the life of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

Immediately following an aggressive line of questioning by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, Graham said angrily, “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020.”

The Republican from South Carolina then turned his attention back to Kavanaugh and asked: “Are you a gang rapist?” Kavanaugh replied: “No.”

The Republican senator also asked Kavanaugh, “Would you say you’ve been through hell?” Kavanaugh responded, “I’ve been through hell and then some.”

Graham expressed sympathy for the Supreme Court nominee and his family, saying, “I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through.” He added, “I hope the American people can see through this sham.”

During Thursday’s hearing, senators have had the option to hand off their questioning to Rachel Mitchell, a career prosecutor with decades of experience prosecuting sex crimes. GOP senators opted to defer to Mitchell during questioning of Christine Blasey Ford, while Democrats asked their own questions. Graham appeared eager to speak himself, however, when it came time to question Kavanaugh, and several Republicans followed his lead.

Graham had a message for Republicans on the panel as well, saying, “To my Republican colleagues, if you vote ‘no’, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing that I have seen in my time in politics.” He told Kavanaugh that he hopes the nominee ends up on the Supreme Court, saying, “that’s exactly where you should be.”

White House officials such as Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Sanders praised Graham’s comments.

“.@LindseyGrahamSC has more decency and courage than every Democrat member of the committee combined. God bless him,” Sanders tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Graham compared the judge’s treatment to Ford’s experience, the woman who came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.

“I’m not going to reward people for playing a political game, I think, with her life,” Graham said. “She is just as much a victim of this as I think Brett Kavanaugh (is). Because somebody betrayed her trust, and we know who she gave the letter to.”

Graham made those comments to reporters on Capitol Hill following Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and ahead of Kavanaugh’s scheduled reappearance before the panel. Kavanaugh testified later on Thursday afternoon.

Graham expressed deep seated anger with his Democratic counterparts for their handling of the accusations from Ford and for California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s decision not to inform others about the allegations after Ford reached out to her confidentially earlier this year.

He accused Democrats further of trying to use the allegations against Kavanaugh to delay the confirmation process and ultimately prevent President Donald Trump from getting Kavanaugh on the court.

“All I can say is that we’re 40-something days away from the election.” Graham said. “And their goal, not Ms. Ford’s goal, is to delay this past the midterms so they can win the Senate and never allow Trump to fill the seat.”

Graham called Ford a “nice lady,” but said her story was uncorroborated and pointed to Kavanaugh’s denial of her allegations. He suggested a rejection of Kavanaugh’s nomination based on these allegations would set a bad precedent as well.

“God help anybody else that gets nominated,” Graham said.

He also took issue with the notion of waiting for an FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh.

“The FBI is going to tell us what?” Graham said. “What house are they going to go to? What city are they going to go to? Who are they going to talk to? Because they tell us the month, barely the year, so this is all delay?”</s>White House officials fanned out across morning television shows on Friday to press the Senate for a vote on Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a committee prepared to consider his Supreme Court nomination the day after a dramatic hearing.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet at 9:30 a.m., with Republican leaders vowing to move forward with a final vote of the full Senate by early next week. In a day-long hearing Thursday, President Trump’s nominee and Christine Blasey Ford, a woman accusing him of sexual assault while both were teenagers, offered starkly different testimony.

“I think he was incredibly powerful and very clear,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Kavanaugh during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

She suggested that Ford was mistaken about her attacker and said Kavanaugh has “been unequivocal since Day One that this did not take place by him.”

Asked whether Trump has the votes to confirm Kavanaugh, Sanders said: “I certainly hope so, and I certainly think so. We have to move forward in this process. Judge Kavanaugh deserves a vote.”

As of Thursday night, three Republicans with potential swing votes — Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins — remained silent about their plans.

The most immediate focus will be on Flake, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, where Republicans hold an 11-to-10 majority. The nomination could still be considered by the full Senate with an unfavorable recommendation by the committee.

[Kavanaugh takes partisan turn as he lashes out at ‘search and destroy’ Democrats]

The votes of a couple of other red-state Democrats have also been in play.

Late Thursday, one of them, Sen. Doug Jones (Ala.), said in a tweet that he would vote no if the chamber presses ahead with consideration of Kavanaugh the day after hearing from Ford, whom Jones said he found “credible & courageous.”

With her voice shaking at times, Ford described in stark detail Thursday being pinned on a bed at a house party by a drunken Kavanaugh, who she said groped her, tried to take off her clothes and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams. She said she was “one hundred percent” certain that Kavanaugh was her attacker.

In his tweet, Jones repeated a call for the Senate to postpone the vote and hear from a third person, Mark Judge, who Ford said was in the room when Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her in 1982.

“What message will we send to our daughters & sons, let alone sexual assault victims?” Jones said in his tweet. “The message I will send is this — I vote no. #RightSideofHistory”

Late Thursday, the American Bar Association, which had previously rated Kavanaugh “well-qualified” for the Supreme Court, called on the Judiciary Committee to halt the confirmation vote, saying it should not move forward until an FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations against him can be completed.

During her appearance on ABC, Sanders suggested that was unneccesary, saying the FBI has conducted six previous background checks on Kavanaugh for federal positions.

“These allegations took place long before any of those background checks would have taken place,” she said, adding that senators had asked questions Thursday similiar to what the FBI would ask if it reopened its process.

Several of the senators who have not declared a position on Kavanaugh, including Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), held a brief meeting in a private office in the Capitol building after the hearing.

Asked by reporters if he believed Ford, Flake said, “I’m not answering those kinds of questions.”

When asked if he was ready to vote as part of the Judiciary Committee on Friday, he said, “We’ll see.”

Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who supported previous Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil M. Gorsuch along with Manchin, have also not said how they would vote on Kavanaugh.

Exiting the meeting with Collins, Flake and Murkowski, Manchin said he did not know what the others would do.

“Nobody told me what decision they made,” he said. “Nobody has.”

During Thursday’s hearing, Kavanaugh angrily assailed Democrats for pushing what he said were false charges to “blow me up and take me down.”

The 53-year-old federal judge was often tearful and paused for gulps of water as he spoke about the toll that the allegations by Ford and two other women have taken on his wife, his children, his parents and his friends.

“This has destroyed my family and my good name,” he said, adding: “This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) told the reporters Thursday night that the Judiciary Committee will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination as planned on Friday, with procedural votes on Saturday and Monday and a final confirmation vote on Tuesday.

“I’m optimistic we’ll get to confirmation,” Cornyn said.

As he left the Capitol on Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, “The committee’s going to vote in the morning, and we’re going to move forward.”

As Senate Republicans pressed ahead with Kavanaugh’s nomination, they had no apparent plans to hear from two other accusers.

Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale University, told the New Yorker magazine that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party when they were both first-year students.

Julie Swetnick, a Washington resident, said in a declaration that Kavanaugh was physically abusive toward girls in high school and present at a house party in 1982 where she says she was the victim of a “gang” rape. She is being represented by Michael Avenatti, whose clients also include Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who was paid to remain silent about an alleged decade-old affair with Trump.

Seung Min Kim, Robert Barnes and Elise Viebeck contributed to this report.</s>He'd prepared a blistering defense of his character and a scathing rebuke of the "national disgrace" of his Supreme Court confirmation process. But if there's a moment to remember, it may be when Kavanaugh stopped yelling.

The nominee — who could barely mention his parents, wife or children without choking up — spoke of his daughter's evening prayers.

"Little Liza, all of 10 years old," Kavanaugh began, before breaking down. His wife bowed her head. Liza, Kavanaugh continued, told her family to pray for his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

"That's a lot of wisdom from a 10-year-old," he said. "We mean no ill will."

Kavanaugh's show of both fury and tears was a cry from the flip side of the #MeToo movement, which one year ago began toppling powerful men from the pinnacle of their professions.

Ford's accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school gathering in the early 1980s drew the movement behind her at a sensitive time in American politics. President Donald Trump, Kavanaugh's patron, is accused by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct and says he's been falsely accused. Allies of the movement argue that an allegation of sexual assault should be taken seriously enough to be investigated by the FBI. Ford's was not.

Kavanaugh lamented that his life and career are being destroyed by "a refuted allegation from 36 years ago."

"I ask you to judge me by the standard that you would want applied to your father, your husband, your brother or your son," he said.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee came days after Kavanaugh gave a comparatively mild-mannered interview on Fox News. On Thursday, Kavanaugh scolded the senators on the 21-member committee and repeatedly proclaimed his innocence. He said he did not sexually assault Ford. He also denied other accusations that surfaced in the 10 days since Ford went public.

Kavanaugh's brow was already furrowed when he strode to the witness table and sat down. He shot glances like arrows at every Democratic member of the committee while he waited for Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley to stop talking and get on with it. When asked, he stood, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.

He sat. Then he tore into a go-for-broke statement that he said he wrote himself, parts of it underlined in black marker. He had wanted a hearing, he said, the day after Ford went public with her accusations Sept. 16. During the ensuing 10 days, additional accusations were raised against Kavanaugh that he unequivocally denies. His family has been threatened. His reputation was likely ruined. It was a "grotesque and coordinated character assassination."

"You may defeat me in the final vote, but you'll never get me to quit," he seethed. "Never."

Then came the paragraph about his family. Kavanaugh began to choke up when he mentioned his mother, Martha, and father, Ed.

Kavanaugh pressed on. "I am innocent of this charge," he said, as several friends and family in the audience wept.

Kavanaugh did, too, several more times during his statement. At one point, tears streamed down his cheeks. When Kavanaugh paused to compose himself, the cramped hearing room was silent except for the clicks of journalists' keyboards and camera shutters.</s>At one point, a security guard could be seen warning Milano about using her phone during the hearing, which prohibits videotaping and photography. Ultimately her device was confiscated after multiple offenses, according to Newsweek.

Milano has been openly critical of the Supreme Court nominee and tweeted Wednesday that she was in the nation's capital "because I don't believe any man's misogyny should take precedent (sic) over a survivor's humanity."

Before the hearing began, Milano posed with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N. Y.). Milano sat next to Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List. Explaining he presence, Milano said she "felt like she needed to be here" in support of Ford.

"I am here today not because I want to be," Ford, who originally detailed her assault allegations in a letter to Feinstein, told the committee, "I am terrified."

Ford said she nonetheless appeared because it's her civic duty to tell the Senate what happened to her at a house party in 1982 and how it has affected her life. And they needed to hear it from her directly.

"Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes," an emotional Ford said.

She told senators she was pinned to a bed as Kavanaugh tried to stop her from screaming by covering her mouth with his hand, making it hard for her to breath.

Ford believed he was going to rape her and thought he might accidentally kill her.

At the time, she was 15 — the same age as one of her two sons.

Kavanaugh, who has categorically denied the allegations, was scheduled to testify after Ford. He planned to tell senators that he's not questioning whether 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," he stated in prepared remarks provided to the committee in advance.

In the days leading up to Thursday's hearing, more allegations have surfaced, accusing Kavanaugh of varying degrees of improper behaviour.

In a New Yorker story published Sunday, college classmate Debra Ramirez said that he shoved his genitals in her face at a party when he was a freshman at Yale.

On Wednesday, the eve of the hearing, Julie Swetnick alleged that Kavanaugh was in the room when she was gang-raped at a high school party. She made the accusation in a sworn statement, which would open her up to perjury charges. In addition, because she holds a security clearance, lying would have career-damaging consequences.

On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee released a letter referred by Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) in which Kavanaugh is accused of shoving a woman up against a wall "very sexually and aggressively" after leaving a Washington bar. The incident happened in 1998 when Kavanaugh was in his 30s and working for independent counsel Ken Starr, who was investigating President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Kavanaugh testifies to the Senate following the testimony of Ford. Kavanaugh denies the sexual assault claim and calls it part of a "calculated and orchestrated political hit" designed to keep him off the Supreme Court.