Between the snapping cameras, the cramped and crowded room, the high dudgeon, and the whiplash of moving from one senator’s stern five-minute question session to another’s obsequious tone, the September 27 hearing was a surreal experience for the many glued to the proceedings. In an age of reality television, the hearing held its own, offering drama, pathos, and suspense.
Whispered arguments broke out at moments between senators and staffers—such as when Grassley openly chided a sweaty-looking Davis, and Feinstein appeared not to hear a critical snippet of information from Jennifer Duck. Mitchell’s methodical queries were regularly interrupted and eventually jettisoned altogether. But almost everyone agreed—regardless of political affiliation—that Ford and her steady, anguished tone were riveting.
Banks—who had noticed her colleague’s heightened emotions and said to Katz on the way into the hearing room, “Don’t cry”—and Katz were particularly proud of Ford, knowing how hard it had been for their client to get to this moment. Koegler gently patted Ford’s shoulder after she testified. Ford’s high school friends later wrote one another text messages praising her poised composure.
Far beyond Capitol Hill, those watching the live feed on video were rapt. The Twittersphere was afire. During Ford’s testimony, the National Sexual Assault Hotline said calls jumped 147 percent. Some Senate staffers tried to draw on the calming techniques they’d learned from Tara Brach, a mindfulness teacher, who as the hearings began in early September led a webinar meditation session in the Hart Senate Office Building, even as loud protests were happening in the lobby. Ashley Judd, Ellen DeGeneres, Emmy Rossum, and other prominent celebrities who had been active in the #MeToo movement lamented Ford’s experience, identified with her trauma, or expressed outrage over her treatment. Many hailed her as a pathbreaker for women, speaking out about sexual assault to a broader audience—and with greater stakes—than anyone they could remember.
“Out of the blue, a hero steps up and I’m in awe,” wrote the actress Sally Field. “I know the pain of these kinds of memories, Dr. Ford. Memories that are indelibly imprinted on your brain no matter how many years go by.”
Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, argued that there should be an FBI investigation in light of Ford’s “sickening” disclosures, and that there should be no vote that week on Kavanaugh.
Men and women around the country, in living rooms, on airplanes, and in offices, reckoned with their own memories of rape or assault, or those of loved ones.
Even President Trump would speak approvingly of Ford’s performance. “I thought her testimony was very compelling, and she looks like a very fine woman to me,” he said to reporters the next day. “She was a very credible witness, and she was very good in many respects.”
Fox News host Chris Wallace pronounced Ford’s testimony a “disaster” for the Republicans. Other conservatives agreed. “Ford seems kind. This doesn’t strike me as partisan,” the outspoken right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich wrote on Twitter. “This will be a tough vote.”
Many Democrats agreed. “Heartbreaking, credible, and compelling,” tweeted Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren of Ford’s testimony. “I believe her, and I hope my Republican colleagues do, too.”
Throughout that day, the senators on the panel received a flood of messages from friends, family, and acquaintances with memories of sexual assault, feedback that members of Congress saw as a call to action. Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, Delaware Democrat Chris Coons, and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake all received messages from people who identified with Ford. It would shape their response to the testimony in the days to come.
Coons said his phone “blew up” in a way it never had before, with texts and emails from people he’d known for decades and others he’d never met before. They started offering their own stories, one after the other, “saying, ‘Me, too: I have had my life changed by sexual assault,’” Coons explained later. “‘It was my father,’ ‘It was my brother,’ ‘It was my priest,’ ‘It was my schoolteacher.’”
The Republican establishment quickly countered. Graham told the press scrum that Ford was “a nice lady” but noted that she “has come forward to tell a hard story that is uncorroborated.” Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy agreed, previewing a line of defense that many Republicans would use in the coming days: However compelling Ford’s account, there was no evidence to support her claims, and, therefore, they could not be accepted as truth in the face of Kavanaugh’s vigorous denials (the prosecutor Rachel Mitchell would say in her final report: “A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that”).
It was an argument that even Ford’s staunchest defenders could not counter. Despite her confiding in friends, her spouse, and a therapist years before Kavanaugh’s ascension, Ford had not shared her experience of assault at any time remotely close to the incident itself. No diary, letter, police report, or other written account existed. Ford’s parents hadn’t known; her friends, including her good friend who had allegedly been present during the evening in question, had no idea. The site of the event—while theoretically traceable, given the details of its layout and its connection to a young Mark Judge—was unknown.
The closest Ford could come to pinpointing record-based evidence of the story she had shared was to suggest searching employment records associated with a summer job Judge had worked in 1982 at the Potomac Village Safeway, where Ford said she had run into him weeks after the incident and found him shame-faced. But those records, if they existed, wouldn’t prove Kavanaugh assaulted her.
The doubts raised by the lack of evidence were powerful. “Just because she’s had a credible story does not mean it’s correct,” Louellen Welsch, a sixty-two-year-old resident of Colorado Springs, told The New York Times. “I need to have a lot more questioning.”
Ford had been in the witness chair for more than three hours when Grassley brought the gavel down, calling for a forty-five-minute recess. Kavanaugh would take the stand next.
Ushered out by her bodyguards and lawyers, Ford was led into a waiting car beside the Hart building. Riding back to the hotel, she called her husband, Russell, who commended her clear, composed delivery. Koegler, who had accompanied Christine in the car, agreed. Christine was subdued during the ride, as if the whole experience hadn’t yet sunk in.
Back at the Watergate, Ford and her supporters occupied two suites, one of which had a television tuned to the hearing. Ford didn’t want to watch Kavanaugh, so she stayed in the other suite, where there were snacks, wine, and friends who came to wish her well.
Some of Ford’s lawyers were there, along with her friends from Palo Alto. Members of her Holton class—including Samantha Guerry, Gichner, and McLean—also came by, along with a supportive male friend from Landon, where her brothers had gone to high school. Ford’s parents, who were now in their eighties, also made an appearance. It had not been easy for the professor to share her memories with them after so many years. Her father, Ralph, had initially counseled against coming forward, presuming little could be achieved after so many years. But over time, he and Ford’s mother, Paula, had come to accept and support their daughter’s decision. Her brothers were not in attendance.
During the whirlwind that followed Ford’s September 16 Post interview, the Blaseys had remained largely out of sight, turning away media inquiries. A short telephone interview with a Post reporter on September 25 was the extent of Ralph’s public comments. “I think all of the Blasey family would support her,” he said. “I think her record stands for itself. Her schooling, her jobs, and so on.” He also said, “I think any father would have love for his daughter.”
Christine’s parents not only bore the sorrow of hearing their only daughter’s allegation of assault at fifteen. They had the added awkwardness of continuing to live in the home where they raised their daughter, in the same area where the incident was said to have occurred, among many of the very same families.
In an odd coincidence, Kavanaugh’s mother, Martha, as a judge had been involved in a 1996 foreclosure case over the Blaseys’ house in Potomac; after the couple settled with their mortgage lender, Martha dismissed the case, enabling the Blaseys to keep their home. At another point, Ralph Blasey had been president of the Burning Tree Golf Club, an all-male establishment in Potomac, where Ed Kavanaugh was also an active member.
Because of these ties to Kavanaugh’s world, Ford had avoided sharing her story with her parents as long as she possibly could. But now she could no longer protect them.
During the break after Ford’s testimony, senators retired for their usual Thursday lunches in the Capitol—Republicans in the Mansfield Room and Democrats in the LBJ Room—where Senator Schumer and his colleagues agreed that Ford’s account was so powerful that it should speak for itself. When it came to questioning Kavanaugh, they didn’t have to go back over her testimony and could cover different ground.
Kavanaugh did not watch Ford’s testimony but instead spent the first part of the hearing going over his remarks at home. Just before noon, as the judge was escorted out the side entrance of his house into one of two waiting black SUVs, a female reporter shouted, “Judge Kavanaugh, what is your reaction to Christine Ford’s testimony so far? How will you make your case to the American people and the Senate Judiciary Committee?”
The gregarious, glad-handing etiquette that Kavanaugh usually modeled had been replaced by a very different, self-protective type of protocol; the judge was now in crisis mode. So he swiftly entered the car without responding to any media questions. Riding away down the street, Kavanaugh could barely be seen through a tinted window.
Once on Capitol Hill, Kavanaugh continued going over his statement at a long conference table in the Finance Committee’s anteroom. His speech—which was both a defense of his record and an angry invocation of the degradations he and his family had already weathered—was, at least on paper, leagues more aggressive than his remarks during the Fox interview earlier in the week. But McGahn, who cleared the room shortly before Kavanaugh was due to testify to have a private audience with the nominee and Ashley, had some further advice.
“You need to reboot the room,” the White House counsel said, according to Carl Hulse’s book, Confirmation Bias: Inside Washington’s War Over the Supreme Court, urging him to remember his life’s work in getting to this point and to speak from the heart.
A few minutes later, when Davis went to fetch Kavanaugh to bring him to the committee room, the judge looked as though he had worked up a powerful head of steam. Still, Davis thought a final word on the need for an aggressive performance might help, telling Kavanaugh, “You better come out swinging.”
Kavanaugh entered the hearing room stiffly, clearly agitated, and spent a moment organizing his place—moving his nameplate to one side, adjusting the microphone, squaring off his prepared remarks. He sniffed and looked up at the committee, his lips pursed and the bridge of his nose creased.
“Judge Kavanaugh, we welcome you,” said Grassley. “Are you ready?”
Behind the judge sat a row of family and friends, many of them women: Ashley, looking dispirited and resigned; his mother, Martha; Suzanne Matan, a friend from high school; and Zina Bash, a former Kavanaugh clerk and one of his closest advisers. McGahn and Kavanaugh’s father, Ed, were also close by. A few rows behind them, Ford’s lawyers, Katz, Bromwich, and Abboud, were visible, sitting not far from Alyssa Milano.
After being sworn in by Grassley, Kavanaugh began. Immediately it was evident that this was a Kavanaugh the country had not seen before. Indeed, even some of his closest friends and colleagues were surprised by the bitter virulence that came out of the judge, whom they typically thought of as mild-mannered and even-tempered.
“Less than two weeks ago, Dr. Ford publicly accused me of committing wrongdoing at an event more than thirty-six years ago, when we were both in high school,” Kavanaugh began. “I denied the allegation immediately, categorically and unequivocally. All four people allegedly at the event, including Dr. Ford’s longtime friend Ms. Keyser, have said they recall no such event. Her longtime friend Ms. Keyser said under penalty of felony that she does not know me, and does not believe she ever saw me at a party, ever.”
He lingered on Keyser’s lack of recollection, speaking slowly and loudly. It was the first tenet of an elaborately conceived statement that served as the closing argument in his personal trial. He would return to it again and again.
“Here is the quote from Ms. Keyser’s attorney’s letter,” Kavanaugh continued. “Quote, ‘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,’ end quote. Think about that fact.
“The day after the allegation appeared, I told this committee that I wanted a hearing as soon as possible to clear my name. I demanded a hearing for the very next day. Unfortunately, it took the committee ten days to get to this hearing. In those ten long days, as was predictable, and as I predicted, my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional accusations. The ten-day delay has been harmful to me and my family, to the Supreme Court, and to the country.
“When this allegation first arose, I welcomed any kind of investigation—Senate, FBI, or otherwise. The committee now has conducted a thorough investigation, and I’ve cooperated fully. I know that any kind of investigation—Senate, FBI, Montgomery County Police, whatever—will clear me. Listen to the people I know. Listen to the people who’ve known me my whole life. Listen to the people I’ve grown up with and worked with and played with and coached with and dated and taught and gone to games with and had beers with. And listen to the witnesses who allegedly were at this event thirty-six years ago. Listen to Ms. Keyser. She does not know me. I was not at the party described by Dr. Ford.”
As she sat just behind her husband’s right shoulder, Ashley’s chin began to tremble, as if to hold back tears. Matan, the high school friend who—along with dozens of other women from that era—had signed a letter attesting to Kavanaugh’s character and defended his conduct to reporters, sat tall and grave on the other side. To Kavanaugh, his family, and his supporters, this moment was the nadir of a toxic cultural moment in which good people were being ruined by unproven accusations, aided by an unhinged media and a coarse brand of political discourse that had not been seen in generations. It was a tragic, devastating experience that shook their belief in fundamental notions of fairness and due process.
“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” continued Kavanaugh, his voice rising. “The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.
“Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something—anything,” he said, emphasizing the word, “to block my confirmation. Shortly after I was nominated, the Democratic Senate leader said he would, quote, ‘oppose me with everything he’s got.’ A Democratic senator on this committee publicly referred to me as evil—evil; think about that word—and said that those who supported me were, quote, ‘complicit in evil.’ Another Democratic senator on this committee said, quote, ‘Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.’ A former head of the Democratic National Committee said, quote, ‘Judge Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.’
“I understand the passions of the moment, but I would say to those senators, your words have meaning. Millions of Americans listen carefully to you. Given comments like those, is it any surprise that peo-ple have been willing to do anything, to make any physical threat against my family, to send any violent email to my wife, to make any kind of allegation against me and against my friends—to blow me up and take me down?
“You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.”
His point that caustic political rhetoric was causing real harm was canny. In a speech about Kavanaugh’s nomination, Senator Cory Booker had said that those not fighting for the personal freedoms that might be dismantled if Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court were “complicit” in “evil.” Booker even quoted Psalm 23, saying that, as a country, “we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.” It was a highly charged speech.
But Kavanaugh was disingenuous in targeting only his Democratic critics for cheapening the nation’s political dialogue. His very own patron, President Donald Trump, had been among the most egregious perpetrators of acidic and denigrating talk. Trump used his speeches and Twitter posts to mock and degrade almost anyone who opposed him, calling one former female aide a “crazed, crying lowlife” and a “dog,” and a CNN anchor “the dumbest man on television.” He had belittled the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who had threatened to send nuclear bombs to the United States homeland, as “rocket man” at a United Nations delegation. He had complained at a White House meeting about aspiring immigrants from “shithole countries” and insulted the IQs of his political opponents. This irony can’t have been lost on Kavanaugh.
Still, he attacked the Democrats for their rhetoric and their tactics. Speaking of Feinstein, who listened with her arms folded, Kavanaugh argued that the Ford accusations had been tucked away, then “unleashed and publicly deployed, over Dr. Ford’s wishes” in order to ruin his prospects. He called the multiple allegations against him, most of which had surfaced only in the prior eleven days, 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.”
For many, the Clinton reference was a low for Kavanaugh—a moment when he lost his intellectual grip and descended into score-settling partisanship far afield of the legitimate concerns over sexual assault. He was not wrong, however, about the political scar tissue that had inspired so much of the liberal anger. The treatment of Garland, the installment of Gorsuch, and a feeling that Republicans were undermining Americans’ support of abortion rights, gender equality, and other issues by ramming conservative nominees onto the court all informed the Democrats’ vehement opposition.
Kavanaugh then reached the central plank of his argument: a flat denial. “I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone,” he said. “Not in high school, not in college, not ever.
“This onslaught of last-minute allegations does not ring true,” he continued, echoing his mother’s saying as a prosecutor about what rings true and false. “I’m not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time. But I have never done this. To her or to anyone. That’s not who I am. It is not who I was. I am innocent of this charge.”
He talked about his family and the impact of the allegations on them, nearly breaking down as Ashley dropped her head behind him. “I intend no ill will to Dr. Ford and her family. The other night, Ashley and my daughter Liza said their prayers. And little Liza—all of ten years old—said to Ashley, ‘We should pray for the woman.’ It’s a lot of wisdom from a ten-year-old.”
He then took a moment to compose himself, with Ashley nodding slowly, as if to silently urge him on. He spoke of his career and all the vetting he had undergone in a quarter century of public and private life, never once being accused of sexual misconduct. He said he may have met Ford at some point but did not recall it—a critical concession that helped legitimize Ford’s assertion that she had known Kavanaugh and his group of friends. As if realizing that, Kavanaugh returned again to Keyser, who had said she did not know him.
Kavanaugh mentioned “two male friends who were allegedly there,” and the fact that they had said, under penalty of felony, that they did not recall the incident Ford described. He said that those two men had “refuted” Ford’s claims, a false and misleading turn for the habitually meticulous judge, given that, in fact, they had said they did not remember them. Kavanaugh mentioned his high school calendars, including the one he had kept during the summer in question—considering it “both a calendar and a diary”—a habit he’d picked up from his father, who had kept detailed calendars since 1978. Kavanaugh choked up at the memory—emotion that would prove rich fodder for Matt Damon’s widely watched parody of the judge on Saturday Night Live.
He also nearly broke down in talking about Renate Schroeder, whom he and his friends had referenced in their 1983 high school yearbook. The “Renate Alumnius,” he said, had been innocuous, “clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us,” and “not,” he added, “related to sex.” It was a dodge, given that nobody had believed even then that real sex had occurred. He blamed the media “circus” for interpreting the reference otherwise, saying he was “so sorry” to Renate for the reference, as “she was, and is, a great person.” The harm to Dolphin clearly affected Kavanaugh, who had indeed been her friend in high school and in sporadic touch with her since. But given the well-evidenced fact that Kavanaugh had bragged about her as a sexual conquest in high school, unless he had forgotten that fact entirely, it was his own past behavior that was paining him, too.
He then repeated that he had been a virgin until years after high school.
He spoke of his record with women—his friendships with women during and after high school, his promotion of and respect for women in the workplace. He noted that he had contingently hired four clerks to aid him on the Supreme Court if he were to be confirmed—all women.
“If confirmed, I’ll be the first justice in the history of the Supreme Court to have a group of all-women law clerks,” he said.
He talked more about the impact of the Ford allegations on his family. “When I accepted the president’s nomination, Ashley and I knew this process would be challenging,” he said. “We never expected that it would devolve into this. Explaining this to our daughters has been about the worst experience of our lives.”
Then the questioning began.
Mitchell had presented Kavanaugh with a written definition of the term “sexual behavior,” and she now asked him to review it. Reading the document, Kavanaugh looked irritated. He furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, sniffed, and drank water. Mitchell asked him about Mark Judge.
“Funny guy, great writer,” said Kavanaugh, describing Judge as part of his circle of high school friends. “Popular. Developed a serious addiction problem that lasted decades. Near death a couple times from his addiction.” Kavanaugh added, “I haven’t talked to him in a couple of years.” He would continue distancing himself from Judge as the hearing continued, calling him a friend of “ours” rather than “mine.”
Kavanaugh then described Patrick Smyth, a friend he’d seen occasionally since high school, who had played defensive tackle on the football team and often driven him to school during their junior and senior years.
Feinstein was given the floor. Her first question was why Kavanaugh hadn’t supported an additional FBI investigation into the recent claims of sexual misconduct, given his confidence that the accusations were false.
Kavanaugh appeared conflicted—pulled in one direction, perhaps, by his strategic instinct to please and in another, no doubt, by having the ultimate professional trophy so close he could taste it. In a way, Feinstein’s question was naive: of course Kavanaugh didn’t want an FBI delay; he wanted to be sworn in.
“Senator, I’ll do whatever the committee wants,” said Kavanaugh, his voice rising. “I wanted a hearing the day after the allegation came up. I wanted to be here that day. Instead, ten days passed where all this nonsense is coming out—you know, that I’m in gangs, I’m on boats in Rhode Island, I’m in Colorado, you know, I’m sighted all over the place. And these things are printed and run breathlessly by cable news.”
He was referring to claims of his alleged assault of a woman in Rhode Island that were later retracted by the man who raised it, and, presumably, to an anonymous account by a Colorado constituent who said he had once shoved a girlfriend up against a wall in Washington while drunk. The account was never clarified or corroborated.
Kavanaugh was increasingly red-faced, animated, and glowing with perspiration. “You know, I wanted a hearing the next day,” he said. “I—my family’s been destroyed by this, Senator, destroyed.”
Feinstein talked about the “terrible and hard part” of the Senate confirmation process—that the panel couldn’t come to a conclusion about any allegations, which in her view made an FBI inquiry even more necessary. Kavanaugh interrupted to explain that the FBI doesn’t reach conclusions in background investigations. Feinstein returned to the idea that the FBI would help gather the facts. Again, Kavanaugh interrupted.
“You’re interviewing me,” he said, gaining steam. “You’re doing it, Senator.”
Mitchell then asked Kavanaugh about his drinking in high school.
“Yes, we drank beer,” he replied. “My friends and I, the boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer. The drinking age, as I noted, was eighteen, so the seniors were legal. Senior year in high school, people were legal to drink, and we—yeah, we drank beer, and I said sometimes—sometimes probably had too many beers, and sometimes other people had too many beers. We drank beer, we liked beer.”
It was misleading in one respect, and understated in another. Seniors were legal when Kavanaugh was a junior; by the time he was a senior, the drinking age had been raised to twenty-one. But throughout those years, Kavanaugh had overindulged regularly, as had many of his classmates. Mitchell asked if he had ever drunk excessively.
“Sure,” he said.
She asked if he had ever passed out from drinking.
“I—‘passed out’ would be—no, but I’ve gone to sleep, but I’ve never blacked out,” he replied. “That’s the—that’s the—the allegation, and that—that—that’s wrong.”
It was something that former drinking buddies found unlikely. But they also weren’t certain it was false. Kavanaugh himself may have blacked out and not realized it.
“Did you ever wake up with your clothes in a different condition, or fewer clothes on than you remembered when you went to sleep or passed out?” Mitchell asked.
Kavanaugh smiled nervously and shook his head, as if to show that the question was preposterous or perhaps because he felt put on the spot. He held up a hand slightly as if to point out how absurd this was. “No, y— no,” he answered, laughing softly.
She touched on the key aspects of Ford’s story: that he had been present with her at a teenage gathering in 1982, that he had been in a room with her and Judge, that he had ground his genitals over her, that he had covered her mouth with his hand, that he had tried to remove her clothes. In each case, Kavanaugh said those things had never happened.
After a fifteen-minute break, Leahy had his five minutes with Kavanaugh. The questioning quickly devolved into an argument, the judge brimming with fury. Leahy’s questions about Judge’s book Wasted, Kavanaugh said, were not an attempt to decode a semi-autobiographical account of drinking at Georgetown Prep, but an effort “to make fun of some guy who has an addiction.”
A question about the yearbook references led to an even more hostile exchange, in which Leahy muttered under his breath about filibustering and Kavanaugh repeatedly interjected with boasts about his academic prowess in high school. Indeed, Kavanaugh’s tendency to resort to his record as a student seemed like its own kind of filibustering. “I’m going to talk about my high school record,” he told the senator, “if you’re going to sit here and mock me.”
Multiple Democratic senators asked Kavanaugh to support an FBI investigation into Ford’s claims, and he consistently answered that he’d do whatever the committee wanted to do, without affirming that he’d specifically back another FBI probe. Durbin asked him to turn to McGahn, in the front row, and request an FBI investigation, at which point Grassley furiously interrupted and asserted that the panel was running the investigation, not McGahn or Kavanaugh. Durbin continued to press him, flustering Kavanaugh.
“I—I welcome whatever the committee wants to do, because I’m telling the truth,” Kavanaugh said.
“I want to know what you want to do,” replied Durbin.
“I—I’m telling the truth,” said Kavanaugh.
“I want to know what you want to do, Judge.”
“I’m innocent. I’m innocent of this charge.”
“Then you’re prepared for an FBI investigation—”
“They don’t reach conclusions. You reach the conclusions, Senator.”
“No, but they do investigate questions.”
“I’m—I’m innocent.”
After Durbin finished, instead of returning to Mitchell, who had expected to use the Republican committee members’ allotted time to question Kavanaugh, Grassley yielded the floor to Graham.
The South Carolina senator, who had been restless in his seat, charged forth like a bull released from its pen. He railed against Feinstein for harboring Ford’s claims for weeks and meeting with Kavanaugh without disclosing them, all while her staff recommended a lawyer to the professor. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” he yelled.
“Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it,” he went on, addressing the Democrats as he shook his fist. “I hope the American people can see through this sham. That you knew about it and you held it. You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford. None.”
Graham’s outburst represented the release Kavanaugh had not allowed himself. The senator’s id had been unleashed just when Kavanaugh had struggled to show restraint. Angry over political scores, under cultural cover from the #MeToo movement, and enabled by a salivating media, the Democrats had trashed this esteemed judge, Graham, Kavanaugh, and their allies thought, and ruined his reputation—possibly forever. It was unforgivable.
Graham turned to Kavanaugh. “Do you consider this a job interview?”
Kavanaugh responded by noting the advice-and-consent process that Congress uses to vet judicial nominees under the Constitution.
“This is not a job interview,” boomed Graham. “This is hell.”
He said that he intended to vote for Kavanaugh and hoped that “everybody who’s fair-minded will.”
Kavanaugh sat for a moment, chin tipped back, looking almost vacant as the floor passed to Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat.
The hearing immediately grew contentious again. Whitehouse got back in the weeds, asking about the yearbook pages, specifically the meaning of “Beach Week Ralph Club.” Kavanaugh explained that he had a weak stomach and was known for throwing up after eating spicy food or drinking beer.
Whitehouse, a former prosecutor who had been Rhode Island’s U.S. attorney before running for Senate, stared at Kavanaugh over the rims of his reading glasses, appearing unmoved by the explanation.
“So the vomiting that you reference in the Ralph Club reference,” he asked drily, “related to the consumption of alcohol?”
Once again, Kavanaugh resorted to his résumé with a defensive retort that led many to later accuse him of impudence and entitlement. “Senator, I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school,” he said. “Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. Worked my tail off.”
Whitehouse persisted. “Did the world ‘Ralph’ you used in your yearbook—”
“I already—I already answered,” said Kavanaugh. He was becoming more confrontational, as he had with Feinstein earlier.
As Whitehouse attempted to read his other questions about Kavanaugh’s yearbook page, the judge jumped in. “I like beer. I like beer,” he said. “I don’t know if you do.”
Whitehouse attempted another question.
“Do you like beer, Senator?” Kavanaugh pressed, before Whitehouse could finish.
Whitehouse was unmoved. He asked about “boofing,” which is sometimes slang for anal sex, but which Kavanaugh described as a reference to flatulence. He asked about Renate; Kavanaugh repeated his earlier response on that matter. Whitehouse asked about “Devil’s Triangle,” sometimes slang for a sexual scenario involving two men and one woman.
“Drinking game,” said Kavanaugh.
“How’s it played?” asked Whitehouse.
“Three glasses in a triangle.”
“And?”
“You ever play quarters?” asked Kavanaugh.
“No.”
“Okay. It’s a quarters game.”
A few moments later, Texas Republican senator John Cornyn stepped in, reminding Kavanaugh that if he was lying, he’d be guilty of a crime. Kavanaugh evenly said he understood that. Cornyn then sympathized with Kavanaugh, much as Graham had. The claims against the judge, Cornyn said, were “outrageous, and you’re right to be angry.”
But Kavanaugh’s calmer demeanor was short-lived, as Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota took over.
“Most people have done some drinking in high school and college, and many people even struggle with alcoholism and binge drinking,” she said. “My own dad struggled with alcoholism most of his life, and he got in trouble for it, and there were consequences. He is still in AA at age ninety, and he’s sober, and in his words, he was pursued by grace, and that’s how he got through this.”
She said that some had characterized Kavanaugh as a “belligerent” drinker and brought up the issue of memory loss as a result of drinking. Kavanaugh interrupted and began talking about his freshman-year roommates at Yale, including two who didn’t get along, causing one to move the other’s furniture out into a courtyard.
Klobuchar returned to her point. “Was there ever a time when you drank so much that you couldn’t remember what happened, or part of what happened, the night before?” she asked.
He said no. She tried again: “So you’re saying there’s never been a case where you drank so much that you didn’t remember what happened the night before, or part of what happened?”
“It’s—you’re asking about, you know, blackout,” Kavanaugh replied. “I don’t know. Have you?” He leaned back in his chair and grinned nervously, as if aware that he was going too far but unable to help himself.
Klobuchar patiently responded: “Could you answer the question, Judge? I just—so you—that’s not happened. Is that your answer?”
“Yeah, and I’m curious if you have,” said Kavanaugh.
Klobuchar was clearly taken aback, but she answered quickly: “I have no drinking problem, Judge.”
“Yeah,” he said, “nor do I.”
The exchange with Klobuchar, even in light of the Clinton reference and the Graham outburst, would be regarded by many as a new low point in the Kavanaugh hearings. As damaging as the Ford allegations were, as excruciating as it had been to watch her, and as exercised as Kavanaugh had been up to then, nothing had appeared quite so impertinent as him turning the tables on a senior female senator who had just opened up about her own family history with alcohol.
Klobuchar, after all, was effectively interviewing Kavanaugh for a job as his superior in that context. She was using compassionate, deferential language and requesting honest answers. Yet Kavanaugh pounced on her, perhaps hoping to give her a sense of the personal anguish and humiliation he was experiencing.
“You don’t go to where they are when they’re acting that way,” Klobuchar later said in an interview, likening her unruffled response to needing to “take away the keys” from an inebriated driver. As a prosecutor, she said, she was trained to let the witness continue talking rather than interrupt or assist. Still, “I just thought he would apologize to me,” she added, “because it was so bad.”
After an unexpected break in the hearing, Kavanaugh did, in fact, apologize, looking tearful as he did so. “Sorry I did that,” he said. “This is a tough process. I’m sorry about that.”
The proceedings stretched on for another ninety minutes, with Democrats continuing to push for an additional FBI probe and Republicans lamenting the hardship Kavanaugh had endured as a result of the allegations leveled against him. Mitchell had been rendered obsolete after Graham’s performance, which had effectively reclaimed the floor for his party members; every other Republican senator to follow grilled Kavanaugh directly. Mitchell sat quietly at her small desk while the majority members used the time that had originally been allotted to her.
Kavanaugh was more controlled by this point. He seemed almost exhausted by the day’s events. Or he may have been encouraged by the sense that the Republicans were stepping up on his behalf, shifting the hearing’s dynamics in his favor. Kavanaugh didn’t need to argue his case as strongly anymore; his Republican supporters were doing it for him. Where the judge had started the day looking like a villain, now he was looking like a victim.
By the time Senator Ben Sasse, the Nebraska Republican, took the floor, Kavanaugh evinced a sense of dark humor toward the whole ordeal.
“Judge, we did thirty-eight hours in public with you. Did we have any private hearings with you?” asked Sasse.
“Yes,” said Kavanaugh.
“Was that a fun time for you?” Sasse answered. “When people—senators could ask questions that are awkward or uncomfortable about potential alcoholism, potential gambling addiction, credit card debt, if your buddies floated you money to buy baseball tickets—did you enjoy that time we spent in here late one night?”
Kavanaugh flashed a wry smile. “I’m always happy to cooperate with the committee,” he said.
A few minutes later, Democrats raised another issue that would haunt Kavanaugh in the days to follow: his temperament. Kavanaugh’s enraged tirades and aggressive retorts had raised doubts in some quarters about his fitness for the Supreme Court, a place where objectivity and a cool head are required.
Ironically, Kavanaugh had brazenly violated his very own principles about “proper demeanor,” which he had articulated just two years before in a speech about “The Judge as Umpire” to Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. “It is important,” Kavanaugh said at the time, “to keep our emotions in check, and be calm amidst the storm. To put it in the vernacular: To be a good umpire and a good judge, don’t be a jerk.
“A good judge and good umpire must demonstrate civility,” Kavanaugh added. “Judges must show that we are trying to make the decisions impartially and dispassionately based on the law and not based on our emotions.” He also said in the speech, “It is very important at the outset for a judge who wants to be an umpire to avoid any semblance of that partisanship, of that political background.”
Democrats realized this issue had traction and exploited it. “Is temperament also an important trait for us to consider?” asked Mazie Hirono, the senator from Hawaii, in the hearing’s third and final hour.
Kavanaugh seemed taken aback, as if he hadn’t realized how he was coming off that day. “For twelve years, everyone who has appeared before me on the D.C. Circuit has praised my judicial temperament,” he said, adding that he had a “well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association.
“So you agree that temperament is also an important factor for—”
“Yes. And the federal public defender, who testified to the com-mittee, talked about how I had—was always open-minded and how I ruled in favor of unpopular defendants, how I was fair-minded. I think, universally, lawyers who’ve appeared before the D.C.—”
“So the answer is yes,” replied Hirono, saying she had only five minutes and needed to move on.
Booker, who spoke a few minutes later, perhaps came the closest to a traditional cross-examination. Eyes wide and searching, his left hand raised for emphasis, Booker zeroed in on a few topics, repeating the questions over and over again if Kavanaugh tried to answer indirectly. Booker bore into Kavanaugh about whether he drank on weeknights, whether he considered Ford to be a political operative, and whether he regretted her coming forward. Kavanaugh maintained his composure, answering quietly but steadily that he thought all allegations should be taken seriously and that he and his family bore no ill will toward Ford and her family.
Toward the end of the hearing, Republican senator Ted Cruz suggested that Feinstein or her staff had leaked Ford’s letter, a notion that had been floated repeatedly that afternoon. Feinstein, who had been stone-faced for much of the proceedings, asked for the floor.
“Mr. Chairman, let me be clear,” she said. “I did not hide Dr. Ford’s allegations. I did not leak her story. She asked me to hold it confidential, and I kept it confidential as she asked.”
In reality, how the story had leaked never became clear. The fact that Ford’s account—even the anonymous version of it—had leaked to the number-two executive at Facebook within days of Kavanaugh’s addition to the short list meant that talk had been swirling around Silicon Valley for months before Ford went public. Staffers in Congresswoman Eshoo’s office and Senator Feinstein’s had both known Ford’s story. Ford’s close friends were aware of it, and, in seeking assistance for her, they had spread it to outer circles in their network. Knowing the accuser’s current profession and a modicum of her background, it wouldn’t have been hard for an informed observer to put two and two together and alert the media. And anyone who did know the details could have leaked them to serve any number of agendas.
Cornyn asked for the floor, then turned to Feinstein. “Can you tell us that your staff did not leak it?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t believe my staff would leak it. I have not asked that question directly, but I do not believe they would,” she answered.
Cornyn asked how, if that were the case, the Ford letter had reached the press.
Feinstein repeated that her staff had not leaked it.
Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican, was one of the last to speak directly to Kavanaugh. In his speech, he tried to lower the temperature.
“This is not a good process, but it’s all we’ve got,” Flake said. “And I would just urge my colleagues to recognize that, in the end, we are twenty-one very imperfect senators trying to do our best to provide advice and consent. And in the end, there is likely to be as much doubt as certainty going out of this room today.”
The Louisiana Republican John Kennedy had the last word. He asked Kavanaugh if he believed in God; Kavanaugh said he did. Then, one by one, he asked Kavanaugh to say whether the allegations of Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick were true. Kavanaugh said they were not.
Kennedy pressed him: “No doubt in your mind?”
“Zero,” said Kavanaugh. Then, mirroring Ford’s final words that day, he added: “I’m 100 percent certain.”
“Not even a scintilla?” said Kennedy.
“Not a scintilla; 100 percent certain, Senator.”
“You swear to God?”
“I swear to God.”