Republican Sen. Jeff Flake on Sunday said he was uncomfortable voting yes to advance Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court without hearing what his accuser has to say, Politico reports.
"If they push forward without any attempt with hearing what she's had to say, I'm not comfortable voting yes," Flake said hours after Christine Balsey Ford went public with claims that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982 when both were teenagers. "We need to hear from her. And I don't think I'm alone in this."
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Kavanaugh’s advance this Thursday.
Ford, a California research psychologist, had written a confidential letter to her local congresswoman in July, but decided in early August to not come forward because she thought it would upend her life and not affect the confirmation. She went public with the Post because she wanted to be the one to tell her story.
Ford told the Post that the incident occurred when she was 15 and a student at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Md. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at Georgetown Preparatory School. Kavanaugh and a friend — both allegedly “stumbling drunk” at a small gathering of teens that night — corralled her into a bedroom in a house in Montgomery County, she said.
With his friend watching, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and trying to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.
Kavanaugh has denied the accusations.
Democrats have called on the Judiciary Committee to delay the claims. Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, is seeking more information on Ford’s account, according to a spokesman who spoke with Politico.
"Grassley is actively working to set up ... follow-up calls with Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford ahead of Thursday’s scheduled vote."
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