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U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono called Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s fiery denouncement of Democrats during his statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee “pretty off the wall” for a nominee being vetted to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and said it showed that women and victims of sexual assault still aren’t being treated the way they should be.
“In his testimony when he railed about the Democrats having a plot to do him in — is that the kind of thing that we expect from someone who is supposed to be nonpartisan? To be attacking the Democrats as plotting to do him in,” Hirono told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser following the gripping, eight-hour hearing that was convened to hear Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh.
“I thought goodness, someone who is going to be on the Supreme Court thinks that the Democrats are engaged in a vast conspiracy,” she went on to say. “That is pretty off the wall if you ask me.”
The morning began with emotional yet collegial testimony from Ford who provided a sharp account of an assault she said happened when she was 15 and Kavanaugh 17. Appearing nervous and at times tearful, Ford described being at a party where she was pushed into a bedroom and onto a bed. She says Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge turned up music in the room. Kavanaugh then jumped on top of her, groping her and “grinding” into her, she said, as he tried to take off her clothes. She said he covered her mouth when she tried to scream.
Ford said she feared that Kavanaugh “was accidentally going to kill me.” Asked of her strongest memory from the event, she said “the uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense.”
Kavanaugh, who said he didn’t watch Ford’s testimony, addressed the Judiciary Committee after Ford, emphatically denying the allegations, his face contorting with emotion and at times breaking down into tears. Rather than focus on Ford, he focused his fury on the process, which he said had become a “national disgrace.”
“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, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups,” he told the committee in his opening remarks.
He said the vetting process had devolved into a “grotesque and coordinated character assassination” and that it had “destroyed my family and my good name.”
Rather than questioning Kavanaugh about Ford’s sexual assault allegations, Republicans spent much of their time accusing the Democrats of trying to delay the process and sabotage Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Hirono told her colleagues, however, that it was an attempt to divert attention from the real issue.
“My colleagues on the other side are accusing the Democrats of some sort of political conspiracy but that’s because they want to distract us from what happened this morning and what happened here this morning is that we heard from Dr. Ford who spoke to us with quiet, raw emotional power about what happened to her,” Hirono said during the hearing. “She said she was 100 percent certain that it was you who attacked her.”
Hirono, who has attracted national attention for her blunt questioning style during the nomination process, focused her time during the hearing on issues of character, emphasizing that the process was a job interview, not a criminal investigation.
“Women and men all across America are disgusted and sick and tired of how basic decency has been driven from our public life,” she said.
After the hearing, she told the Star-Advertiser that she had hoped that the #MeToo movement had created a space for people to come forward, be heard and believed, “but with this hearing, that obviously didn’t happen.”
“What this hearing showed is that we have not come as far as we need to come in how we treat these kinds of reports and the vilification of Dr. Ford and calling her a liar and all of that, that is no way to go,” she said, emphasizing the need for an independent investigation.
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