(Bloomberg) — Christine Blasey Ford will testify in an open hearing on Thursday at 10 a.m. about what she says was a sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at a party decades ago, her lawyers said on Sunday, even as negotiations continue over certain details. “Despite actual threats to her safety and her life, Dr. Ford believes it is important for Senators to hear directly from her about the sexual assault committed against her,” the California professor’s lawyers said in a statement following a call with staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The deal sets up a final showdown in the bitter fight over President Donald Trump’s second high court pick. The White House in a statement on Saturday continued its support for Kavanaugh, saying he’s “eager to testify publicly to defend his integrity and clear his good name.” Sunday’s call was bipartisan and lasted about an hour, said a person familiar with the conversation who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. Among the issues still being ironed out are how long senators will have to ask questions, the person said. Ford’s lawyers also added details for other witnesses they would like to be called, including two trauma experts; Republicans have so far declined to accommodate that request, the person said. Casting Doubt Republican lawmakers and the White House this weekend have cast doubt on Ford’s allegations, citing others she said also were at the party in question saying they have no recollection of it. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday” said he wouldn’t vote against Kavanaugh without additional evidence.“Unless there’s something more, no, I’m not going to ruin Judge Kavanaugh’s life over this,” he said. Graham said there’s no way Kavanaugh could be prosecuted based on the evidence presented so far. “You couldn’t get a warrant because the three people named by Dr. Ford as having been at the party outside of Kavanaugh all say they don’t know what she’s talking about,” he said. In a statement late Saturday, the White House addressed the specifics of Ford’s case: it said the four other people Ford claimed were at the party where the incident allegedly occurred all denied “any knowledge of the incident or having attended such a party.” Fourth Denial According to the White House, a fourth denial was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Saturday by Leland Keyser, whose lawyer said in a statement she “does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present with, or without, Dr. Ford.” The Washington Post reported late Saturday that Keyser said in an interview that she was close friends with Ford and believed Ford’s allegation. Debra Katz, one of Ford’s attorneys, noted that her client has said she didn’t share her story with anyone for years. “It’s not surprising that Ms. Keyser has no recollection of the evening as they did not discuss it,” Katz said. “It’s also unremarkable that Ms. Keyser does not remember attending a specific gathering 30 years ago at which nothing of consequence happened to her. Dr. Ford, of course, will never forget this gathering because of what happened to her there.” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, also a Judiciary Committee member, questioned why Ford would have come forward if the allegation wasn’t true. Nothing to Gain “It really speaks to her credibility at this moment. What in the hell did she have to gain by doing this?” Durbin said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. “These are serious allegations that need to be investigated.” A public hearing would be a high-stakes confrontation echoing the 1991 event when Anita Hill accused now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her when he was her supervisor at two federal agencies. Thomas was confirmed after a hearing that infuriated many women who believed the all-male committee mistreated Hill. “Dr. Ford will tell her story in the face of an impossible choice and vile bullying by Republican leadership,” said Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Judiciary Committee member. “I will support her steadfast bravery.” Ford says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party during the early 1980s, when both were high school students in suburban Washington D.C. Kavanaugh strongly denies the claim. ‘Fundamentally Inconsistent’ In a Saturday email, attorneys Katz and Lisa Banks said many aspects of the proposal made by the Senate panel “are fundamentally inconsistent with the committee’s promise of a fair, impartial investigation into her allegations, and we are disappointed with the leaks and the bullying that have tainted the process.” After several days of restraint by the president, Trump attacked Ford’s credibility on Twitter Friday, saying she should have filed charges decades ago if the alleged attack was “ as bad as she says.” The president’s comments infuriated Democrats, dismayed many Republicans and risked further alienating women voters ahead of the Nov. 6 mid-term elections, in which Democrats have a chance to win control of the House and perhaps the Senate. On Twitter, the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport trended among women — and men — who explained why they didn’t report instances of assault from years or decades ago. Senate Republicans hope to confirm Kavanaugh before the Supreme Court begins its new term on Oct. 1. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky expressed confidence to a gathering of conservatives in Washington that Kavanaugh will be confirmed. ‘Keep the Faith’ “In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the Supreme Court,” McConnell said at the Values Voter Summit Friday. “Keep the faith, don’t get rattled by any of this.” Trump’s tweet on Friday said: “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”<doc-sep>“Well, it’s certainly relevant to the whole conversation,” Mr. Durbin said on the ABC program “This Week.” “Dr. Ford has said that they were stumbling drunk at the time that this occurred. And there have been a lot of things said about the alcohol that was consumed by the judge as well as by others in his school. That has to be part of any relevant questioning.” In a preview of his defense, Judge Kavanaugh planned on Sunday to hand over to the Judiciary Committee calendars from the summer of 1982 that do not contain evidence of a party similar to the one described by Dr. Blasey. His team plans to argue that the calendar pages represent a piece of evidence that fails to corroborate Dr. Blasey’s account, according to a person familiar with the defense. But the calendar pages from June, July and August of that year, which were reviewed by The New York Times, also in no way disprove her accusation. Along with a list of statements from other potential witnesses insisting they do not remember the episode, the pages only reinforced on Sunday that Judge Kavanaugh’s fate will rest in the hands of individual senators who must decide whose account they believe. Senators looking to confirm or refute the allegations will face a nearly impossible task. Complicating matters, Dr. Blasey has said she does not recall the specific date or location of the house where the alleged incident occurred, though she believes it was during the summer of 1982. Judge Kavanaugh’s prospects were further clouded on Sunday when The New Yorker reported on a new allegation of sexual impropriety: A woman who went to Yale with Judge Kavanaugh said that, during a drunken dormitory party their freshman year, he exposed himself to her, thrust his penis into her face and caused her to touch it without her consent. In a statement, Judge Kavanaugh denied the allegation from the woman, Deborah Ramirez, and called it “a smear, plain and simple.” The New Yorker did not confirm with other eyewitnesses that Judge Kavanaugh was at the party.<doc-sep>Photo : Getty Before Brett Kavanaugh can accept a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the nation, he must publicly face one of the three women who have recently accused him of sexual assault. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning, and if you plan to watch the hearings, here’s what to know and how to tune in. Advertisement By now, most people are aware that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of statistics at Palo Alto University, has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge of sexually assaulting her at a party in 1982. Tomorrow, both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh will answer questions about the allegations in the final panels of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. (Mark Judge, the sole eyewitness, has declined to testify.) These are the people who will be asking the questions: The Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Christopher A. Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris (D-CA). Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Christopher A. Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris (D-CA). Rachel Mitchell, a sex crimes prosecutor from Maricopa County, Arizona That’s right—precisely zero Republican senators will participate in the questioning. According to committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), hiring Ms. Mitchell as staff counsel is supposed to “de-politicize the process and get to the truth.” It seems more like a transparent bid to solve the optics of eleven old white guys grilling a woman about sexual assault, but hey, it beats Plan A. (To be clear, the Republican Plan A was having female staffers do their jobs for them.) Tomorrow’s panels begin at 10 A.M. Eastern time, with Dr. Ford scheduled to testify first. If you’d like to watch them, C-SPAN 3 will televise the proceedings in their entirety, and livestreams will be available via most major news networks. ABC News, C-SPAN, and CBS News streams don’t require a cable login, and PBS NewsHour will stream the hearing on YouTube.<doc-sep>Did Brett Kavanaugh sexually assault Christine Blasey Ford in 1982? And if he did, does that disqualify him from being seated on the U.S. Supreme Court? These should be the threshold questions for the senators who will interrogate Kavanaugh and Blasey Thursday. But most everyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee is more interested either in advancing Kavanaugh's confirmation or blocking it than in getting to the bottom of what happened when 17-year-old Brett met 15-year-old Christine. Read more: Kavanaugh's '82 calendar to be used as evidence Kavanaugh accuser Ford has 4 corroborators Republican senators will be watching Kavanaugh the way someone driving through the desert watches a gas gauge hovering near empty. Their $64,000 question: Is the evidence against the nominee sufficiently convincing that reasonable voters (and especially women) will doubt his repeated denials and condemn lawmakers (especially men) who support his confirmation? Democrats will be making a different reckoning: Is Blasey's accusation credible enough to overcome Kavanaugh's vehement insistence that she is lying, or at least mistaken about the identity of her assailant? Or will senators who stand by Blasey be dismissed as conspirators in a cynical smear attempt? So what should viewers be looking for when they watch Kavanaugh, Blasey and the senators who will referee their extraordinary (if not quite unprecedented) showdown? (Editor's note: If you among the millions who have already concluded with what they consider a moral certainty who is telling the truth, stop reading this now and make an appointment with a competent neurologist: There is something wrong with your thinking equipment. As of this writing, there is simply not sufficient evidence in the record for reasonable people to conclude with any confidence what happened between the two principals. Only Kavanaugh has spoken publicly about the allegations. His accuser's first opportunity to tell her story — which is also the public's first opportunity to compare her demeanor with his — lies in the future.) How do they come off? Will Blasey be able to provide an account as coherent, succinct and impassioned as the one Kavanaugh gave to FOX News? Will he appear even less comfortable being cross-examined by skeptical interrogators as he was fielding questions from a sympathetic news network's hand-picked correspondent? A glaring contrast between the two could be dispositive. But don't expect one: By the time they appear on your TV screens, both witnesses will have undergone repeated trial runs with handlers watching for everything from factual inconsistencies to unconscious nervous tics. If the preppers have done their job, neither the accuser nor the accused is likely to experience a dramatic meltdown on live television. The mistaken-identity defense If both witnesses appear similarly forthright and sincere, Kavanaugh will enjoy an advantage, because he has already previewed a defense that explains such a stand-off: In speculating that Blasey correctly remembers being assaulted but has conflated her assailant's identity with his, Kavanaugh has found a way to challenge his accuser's accuracy without impugning her honesty. A possible counter-explanation — that Kavanaugh was so drunk that he genuinely has no memory of an attack he perpetrated — is weakened by the absence of witnesses who can corroborate either the assailant's identity or the assault itself. Or is it? Blasey's lawyers say they have identified several such witnesses, although as of Wednesday morning there were no plans to call any of them before the committee. Where's the wing-man? The demeanor of secondary witnesses can tip the scales in a close credibility contest between the principals. But if the Judiciary Committee's GOP majority holds together, the public will not hear from Kavanaugh's classmate, Mark Judge, who Blasey says was in the room when she was attacked. Judge looms as the Kato Kaelin character in the allegations against Kavanaugh, a witness whose own history could spell trouble for either side. Blasey's testimony could make his absence from the hearing room more conspicuous, and the committee's decision to exclude him and other witnesses untenable. The Ramirez factor One witness the committee may yet hear from is Deborah Ramirez, who has described an unrelated incident in which Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while both were students at Yale. Strictly speaking, Ramirez's testimony is irrelevant to the central question of whether Blasey's allegation is true. But her own credibility, which has already come under attack by President Trump, could be important in helping the public decide whether Kavanaugh is a liar or the victim of a coordinated smear. The shakier Ramirez's account appears, the more likely the committee's Republican majority is to call her to divert attention from Blasey's allegation and portray both women as pawns in a strategic campaign to discredit Kavanaugh. What's the standard? Barring the emergence of more dispositive evidence (a new eye-witness, for instance, or contemporaneous diary entries), it's hard to know how Blasey's champions can prove that Kavanaugh assaulted her beyond a reasonable doubt — the standard that obtains in a criminal trial. But what if the preponderance of the evidence — the standard by which judges and juries decide who should prevail in a civil lawsuit — cuts in Blasey's favor? If the consensus of the public is that it does, are senators obliged to deny Kavanaugh's confirmation? Or is he entitled to the same benefit of the doubt (and presumption of innocence) as a criminal defendant? In his Fox appearance Monday night, Kavanaugh insisted (16 times? 17?) that he only wants "a fair process." I hope some senator will think to ask him if that process should be conducted by the rules of a criminal prosecution or a civil dispute. Bygones? It is possible, of course, to conclude that an attack like the one Blasey has described — that is to say, one committed by a minor under the influence of alcohol — should not be a disqualifying event so many decades after the event. But Kavanaugh can scarcely make that argument, or enjoy the chance of redemption it offers to youthful offenders, without copping to the youthful offense he has consistently denied.<doc-sep>
(CNN) — The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the woman accusing him of sexual assault are set to testify about her allegation will see both witnesses face five minutes of questioning from each senator on the panel, or a lawyer if senators choose to yield their time. The way the hearing will unfurl was revealed Tuesday after CNN obtained details of the format for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, in which both Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford will testify publicly. A source familiar with the matter provided the following details to CNN after notices were sent to Kavanaugh’s and Ford’s legal teams. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley will make an opening statement with no time limit, followed by an opening statement from the top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who also will not have a time limit. Ford, who alleges when she and Kavanaugh were in high school he pinned her down at a party and covered her mouth while trying to remove her clothing, will then be sworn in and give an opening statement. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation. There will be one round of questions in which each senator will have five minutes each to ask Ford questions. Those five minutes can be yielded to counsel if a senator chooses. Grassley confirmed Tuesday in a statement that he has hired Rachel Mitchell, a career prosecutor with decades of experience prosecuting sex crimes, to question the witnesses. Mitchell will ask the questions for the GOP senators, while Democrats will do their own questioning. Ford will then leave the committee hearing room, and Kavanaugh will enter once Ford has departed. The Supreme Court nominee will be sworn in and will then give his opening statement. In the same format as the questioning for Ford, there will be one round of questions in which senators have five minutes to either ask questions themselves or yield that time to outside counsel. Grassley announced Tuesday that a committee vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination is tentatively scheduled for Friday. The hearing will occur days after a second woman, Deborah Ramirez, told The New Yorker that when she and Kavanaugh were in college together, he exposed himself to her at a dormitory party. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation.