In his opening statement Thursday, Kavanaugh said he’s not questioning that Ford “may have been sexually assaulted” but that he was not the one who had done it. Two of Kavanaugh’s classmates, Judge and P.J. Smyth, who Ford said was at the party, provided statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee saying they don’t have knowledge or memory of any such incident. Judge said he never saw Kavanaugh act the way Ford had described. Smyth described Kavanaugh as a “person of integrity.”<doc-sep>WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 14: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) speaks at a tax reform hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill September 14, 2017 in Washington, DC. President Trump has indicated that tax reform should be a major legislative goal this fall. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images) Brett Kavanaugh speaks at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 27, 2018. (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read MICHAEL REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images) Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh arrives to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, September 27, 2018. - Kavanaugh was to testify in front of the panel next on Thursday afternoon, having stridently rejected the allegations of sexual abuse by Blasey Ford and two other women in prepared remarks. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, September 27, 2018. - Kavanaugh was to testify in front of the panel next on Thursday afternoon, having stridently rejected the allegations of sexual abuse by Blasey Ford and two other women in prepared remarks. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) Christine Blasey Ford swears in at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for her to testify about sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 27, 2018. Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS Supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on September 27, 2018. - University professor Christine Blasey Ford, 51, told a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that could make or break Kavanaugh's nomination she was "100 percent" certain he was the assailant and it was "absolutely not" a case of mistaken identify. (Photo by Gabriella Demczuk / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read GABRIELLA DEMCZUK/AFP/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 27: Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) shouts while questioning Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill September 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. Kavanaugh was called back to testify about claims by Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexually assaulting her during a party in 1982 when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) (CNN) — Leland Ingham Keyser, a friend of the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were at a party in high school, does not refute the veracity of the allegation, although she does not remember the alleged incident, her lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, claims that during a party in the early 1980s at which Keyser and several others were present, Kavanaugh drunkenly pushed her into a bedroom, pinned her down and attempted to remove her clothes before she was able to escape. Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegation. “Ms. Keyser does not refute Dr. Ford’s account, and she has already told the press that she believes Dr. Ford’s account,” Keyser’s attorney, Howard Walsh, wrote in the letter, which was sent to the committee overnight Friday. “However, the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate it because she has no recollection of the incident in question.” Walsh also said in the letter that Keyser will “cooperate fully” with an FBI investigation into the allegation. The letter comes after emotional testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh about the allegation at a committee hearing Thursday. Keyser felt the need for the letter, Walsh wrote, to clarify a previous statement about the allegation, which came up at the hearing and which she believed made it sound as if she did not believe the party had occurred. The previous statement, which Walsh released to CNN and the committee last week, said, “Simply put, Ms. Keyser 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.” In her testimony Ford said she remembered that Keyser, a longtime friend, was present at the party, but that it is not surprising Keyser would not recall the party because Ford did not tell her about the alleged assault at the time. “Oh no, she didn’t know about the event,” Ford told the committee, “She was downstairs during the event and I did not share it with her.” Kavanaugh mentioned Keyser’s statement several times during his testimony to stress that no one who Ford alleges attended the party has come forward to say they remembered being there. In addition, two others have issued statements saying they don’t remember the party in question. “I have no memory of this alleged incident,” said Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend, who Ford alleged was in the bedroom during the assault. In a letter he sent to the Judiciary Committee last week, Judge also said he did not recall the party and never saw Kavanaugh act in the matter Ford describes. Another person Ford claims was at the party, Patrick J. Smyth, has issued a statement in a letter from his lawyer to the committee saying he had no knowledge of the party or the allegation. “I understand that I have been identified by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as the person she remembers as ‘PJ’ who supposedly was present at the party she described in her statements to the Washington Post,” Smyth said in the statement. “I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh.” “Personally speaking, I have known Brett Kavanaugh since high school and I know him to be a person of great integrity, a great friend, and I have never witnessed any improper conduct by Brett Kavanaugh towards women,” the statement continued. “To safeguard my own privacy and anonymity, I respectfully request that the Committee accept this statement in response to any inquiry the Committee may have.” On Friday, the White House agreed to ask the FBI to investigate “current credible allegations” as a part of Kavanaugh’s background check. Lawyers for Judge and Smyth said they would cooperate. Additional allegation Besides Ford’s allegation, the FBI is looking at the accusation of another woman, Deborah Ramirez, who has alleged Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at dormitory party while the two were undergraduate students at Yale. The FBI has reached out to Ramirez, her attorney said, confirming a report in The Washington Post. “We can confirm the FBI has reached out to interview Ms. Ramirez and she has agreed to cooperate with their investigation,” the attorney, John Clune, said in a statement. “Out of respect for the integrity of the process, we will have no further comment at this time.” Kavanaugh and the White House have denied Ramirez’s allegation, which was reported by The New Yorker. “This alleged event from 35 years ago did not happen, Kavanaugh said in a statement last Sunday when The New Yorker published the article. “The people who knew me then know this did not happen and have said so. This is a smear, plain and simple.” CNN has not independently confirmed Ramirez’s allegations. Ramirez’s lawyers wrote a letter to the leaders of the Judiciary Committee this week saying Ramirez, who lives in Colorado, was willing to cooperate with them regarding her allegation as well as a separate letter to the FBI’s field office in Denver requesting that her allegation be included in the agency’s background investigation for Kavanaugh’s nomination. CNN’s Caroline Kelly contributed to this report.<doc-sep>As Christine Blasey Ford testified Thursday in the Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she was guided through her initial questioning, on behalf of Republican members, by a veteran Arizona sex crimes prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell. Though Ms. Mitchell’s cross-examinations might typically be expected to target suspects, her questioning in the first part of the hearing on Thursday — low-key, patient, but persistent — probed the details of an accuser’s account, looking for conflicting or missing details. How did Dr. Blasey get home from the party where she said Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted her? Why did she say she had heard conversation downstairs, then say she did not? What communication has she had with people she said were at the party, but who claim not to remember it? Who paid for her polygraph test? Next, though, she turned to Judge Kavanaugh, with questions that seemed aimed at eliminating any possibility of ambivalence in his account. Had he ever drunk so much that he blacked out, or woke up without some of his clothing? Had he ever at any time engaged in sexual behavior with Dr. Blasey, even if it was consensual? What about those changes on his calendar from 1982?<doc-sep>
The prosecutor who questioned professor Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over sexual assault allegations wrote in a memo that Ford's case against Kavanaugh was weak. In the five-page memo obtained by The Washington Post, Mitchell detailed several inconsistencies from Ford's testimony, in which she claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s. Based on these inconsistencies, Mitchell wrote, she would not bring criminal charges against Kavanaugh. The prosecutor who questioned professor Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over sexual assault allegations wrote in a memo that Ford's case against Kavanaugh is weak. The Washington Post obtained the five-page memo prosecutor Rachel Mitchell sent to Senate Republicans Sunday night that said key inconsistencies in Ford's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee rendered the case too weak to pursue. "A 'he said, she said' case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that," Mitchell wrote. "Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them." Mitchell pointed out in the memo that Ford wasn't able to recall the date and never identified Kavanaugh by name in the evidence provided to the committee, which included notes from therapy sessions in 2012 and 2013. In her testimony, Ford said she was "100%" certain that Kavanaugh was the person who committed the early 1980s assault when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh emphatically denied these claims following Ford's testimony. "For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the [Senate Judiciary] Committee," Mitchell wrote. "Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard." Describing the allegations she first made known in a letter to members of the Judiciary Committee, Ford said Kavanaugh and a friend locked her in an upstairs bedroom at a party, pinned her to a bed, groped her, and held his hand over her mouth as she screamed. Mitchell wrote in the memo Ford's failure to recall other key details about the incident's date and location "raises significant questions" about her account. Ford also named three eyewitnesses who she said were present at the party. However, as Mitchell wrote, all three could not recall the party and couldn't corroborate Ford's account. The woman Ford identified as her lifelong friend who was downstairs during the incident, Leland Keyser, told the committee she believes Ford. Amid worries the testimony would set off a partisan firestorm, Committee Democrats praised Ford during her testimony for coming forward, and some Republican senators suggested they found her to be a credible witness. Mitchell is a longtime prosecutor specializing in sex crimes hired by Senate Republicans to ensure fair and respectful proceedings in hearings for Kavanaugh's potential confirmation. The memo comes just two days into a developing FBI investigation into sexual misconduct allegations by three women against Kavanaugh, all of which he has categorically denied. Since Ford's testimony, lawmakers disagreed along party lines about how to proceed. Republicans pushed to move forward with Kavanaugh's confirmation but Democrats achieved the FBI background check they had championed in a shock move Frdiay by Republican swing vote Sen. Jeff Flake. Though agents have reportedly interviewed one of the accusers, Ford has not been contacted since President Donald Trump ordered the supplemental background check.