The professor who accused a candidate for the U. S. Supreme Court of sexual assault is her memoir to reiterate her case.
In September 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified that Brett Kavanaugh, then an acting appellate judge appointed by Donald Trump to the U. S. Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her 36 years earlier when they were first-rate students, members of the country club in the Washington suburbs.
“I thought he might kill me unintentionally,” Ford, then 51, told the Washington Post. “He was looking to attack me and take my clothes off. “
Kavanaugh vehemently denied it. He declared his fondness for moss.
“We drank beer. . . I enjoyed the beer,” the judge told Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at his Senate hearing. Pressed by Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to find out if he had ever passed out from drinking beer, Kavanaugh turned up the heat. On SNL, Matt Damon commemorated the rabid performance. PJ, Squi, Handsy Hank and Gang-Bang Greg are now part of the television tradition. The Senate chose Kavanaugh anyway, 50-48, a vote in line with the component line.
Ford now returns to tell his story, in One Way Back: A Memoir. Basically, he is daring Kavanaugh to sue her for defamation. They both know that fact is an absolute defense.
Kavanaugh is not a “perfectly righteous person,” Ford writes. The fact is, he was in the room with me that night in 1982. And I think he knows what happened. Even if it’s blurry due to alcohol, I think you want to know.
Sitting in the Superior Court, Kavanaugh is silent.
Ford is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a member of Stanford’s medical school. She is an avid surfer. Metallica is his favorite band. She cites private cases as the reason she was slow to come forward, opting not to bring her story to the attention of authorities as Kavanaugh ascended to the legal firmament in Washington.
“Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the Supreme Court, if my attacker had run in local elections, for example, I probably wouldn’t have said anything,” Ford writes, adding that it’s “a sad and scary thing. “”admit. “
From Kavanaugh to Anthony Kennedy, his immediate predecessor on the Supreme Court, to George W. Bush and the U. S. Court of Appeals, Ford remained silent. Even with his explanation, the reader wonders why.
Ford also highlights his own school years.
“I had tried mushrooms and marijuana from time to time before, but now I’ve also explored MDMA, which has helped me get out of myself,” she writes, adding, “At the time, I knew they were saying about everything, adding to my self-esteem issues. . . I never indulged in anything harder, because cocaine didn’t help me with my anxiety and heroin had never crossed my path until I got out of college, and during that time “I had missed the window of experimentation with heroin. I would have demanded. “
If right-wing activists seeking revenge were to rely on such confessions, it’s worth noting that Trumpworld is full of stories about drugs and alcohol. Consider the very public cases of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, and Ronny Jackson, Trump’s White House physician-turned-Texas congressman. The GOP likes to go after Hunter Biden, who has struggled with addiction but never held office.
For Ford, the fight over Kavanaugh’s confirmation has taken a heavy personal toll. Threats have been made against him and his family. There were wounds in his psyche. One day, he recalls, he looked at the site of a structure and imagined it as a Lego set. “That’s great,” he thought. I wish I was a structural worker. Maybe other people were right. Maybe I’m crazy.
Ford writes favorably about his encounter with Anita Hill, the worker who in 1991 confronted Clarence Thomas over his alleged sexual harassment, stoking some other epic war for the Supreme Court nomination. In 2019, following the fight with Kavanaugh, Hill told Ford that time could help heal the wounds.
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Ford’s politics are left-wing. In One Way Back, he records his satisfaction with the “blue wave” of 2018, the “progressive victories,” and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in a race for the New York House of Representatives that year. Nancy Pelosi, the former president, praises One Way back in her jacket. So did Hill.
Kavanaugh is a vital and debatable figure. In 2022, he drew four other conservatives in Dobbs v. Jackson, voting to overturn Roe v. Wade. These five justices eviscerated the concept of a constitutional right to privacy. In some other settlement, Kavanaugh said that in doing so, the court had not undermined precedents protecting contraception, interracial marriage and same-sex unions. Other justices took a different view.
The Dobbs tremors have repercussions on political divisions. In the 2022 midterm elections, the long-awaited red wave failed to materialize, thanks in part to Dobbs. In the Republican regions of Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio, voters granted legal protections to abortion rights.
On Capitol Hill, Pelosi’s successors as House speaker are also subject to the whims of Republican fanatics. Kevin McCarthy is almost never a member of Congress anymore. Mike Johnson holds the gavel by the narrowest of margins. In February, Democrats overturned the seat in the past through George Santos, the indicted fabulist. Autopsies revealed that abortion rights played a huge role in the Republican defeat. The risk of a national ban on abortion drove the electorate to the polls. For now, for Democrats, Dobbs is a gift that keeps on giving, thanks to Kavanaugh and company.
“I’d like to know that we’re in the midst of a revolution that may not be recognizable for a few years,” Ford writes.
Maybe faster than that.