Furious Kavanaugh denies sex assault after accuser testifies

WASHINGTON — A defiant Brett Kavanaugh, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, angrily denied sexual assault allegations on Thursday and condemned his bitter Senate confirmation process as a “national disgrace.”

Kavanaugh’s passionate defense came after a university professor, Christine Blasey Ford, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he sexually assaulted her 36 years ago.

The allegations against the 53-year-old conservative judge have thrust the Trump administration into the #MeToo movement’s harsh glare, and threaten to derail its bid to tilt the nation’s highest court to the right for years to come.

“I categorically and unequivocally deny the allegation by Dr. Ford,” said Kavanaugh, whose voice shook with anger during an opening statement that saw him repeatedly shed tears. “I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone, not in high school, not in college, not ever.”

“I am innocent of this charge,” Kavanaugh thundered.

Earlier, during four hours of emotionally-charged testimony, Blasey Ford, 51, said she was “100 percent” certain Kavanaugh was her assailant and it was “absolutely not” a case of mistaken identify.

“I am here today not because I want to be,” Blasey Ford said as she recounted the sexual assault which she alleged occurred at a high school party at a suburban Maryland home in 1982.

“I am terrified,” she said, her voice often quavering. “I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me.”

Kavanaugh slammed what he called a “grotesque and coordinated character assassination” and a “calculated and orchestrated political hit.”

“My family and my name have been permanently destroyed by vicious and false accusations,” Kavanaugh said.

“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace.”

But he said he would not withdraw his candidacy for a spot on the nine-member Supreme Court.

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh said. “You may defeat me in the final vote but you’ll never get me to quit. Never.”

Referring to the Constitution’s charge to senators in confirming high officials, he said, “You have replaced ‘advice and consent’ with ‘search and destroy.'”

Shortly before, Ford had told the same senators that she was “100 percent” certain a drunken young Kavanaugh was the one who had pinned her to a bed, tried to remove her clothes and clapped a hand over her mouth as she tried to yell for help. A Kavanaugh friend stood by and they both laughed uproariously during the incident, she testified.

Asked about drinking in high school, he said he had, sometimes to excess. “I like beer,” he said, but he also said he’d never passed out and never attacked Ford. “I have never done this to her or to anyone,” he said.

The mood was intense as Kavanaugh’s voice filled the room for the extraordinary session, unlike Ford’s quiet testimony. Senators watched intently, the only sound the clicking of cameras. In the front row, family and friends quietly cried including his wife, Ashley, whose lips were trembling.

In an election-season battle being waged along a polarized nation’s political and cultural fault lines, Trump and most Republicans have rallied behind Kavanaugh, whose confirmation would provide a chance to cement the conservative majority of the court for a generation.

Republicans have accused Ford and the other women of making unproven allegations and have questioned why they’d not publicly revealed them for decades.

Among the television viewers on Thursday was Trump, who has mocked the credibility of Kavanaugh’s accusers. The president watched aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from the United Nations, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

During a break in the hearing, some of Kavanaugh’s strongest supporters gave no indications of wavering.

“You need more than an accusation for evidence. You need corroboration. That’s what’s missing here,” said No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas.

Earlier Democrats on the committee praised Blasey Ford’s courage in coming forward while a senior Republican senator accused the opposition party of seeking to delay the nomination until after midterm elections in November.

Blasey Ford, wearing glasses and a sober dark blue suit, appeared nervous but poised as she sat at the witness table, consulting occasionally with her lawyer.

A psychology professor who is married with two children, she said Kavanaugh and a friend of his, Mark Judge, were drunk at the 1982 party when they pushed her into a bedroom.

“Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them,” she said. “I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me.

“He began running his hands over my body and grinding into me,” she said. “I believed he was going to rape me.

“I tried to yell for help,” she said. “When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling.

“It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me,” she said.

She said her most powerful memory was “the uproarious laughter between the two, and them having fun at my expense.”

Blasey Ford said she managed to escape when Judge jumped on the bed, sending them all toppling.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, told Blasey Ford he found her testimony “powerful and credible.”

“I believe you,” he said.

Blumenthal also hit out at Trump for failing to authorize an FBI investigation into Blasey Ford’s allegations.

“It’s up to the president of the United States and his failure to ask for an FBI investigation amounts to a cover-up,” he said.

Kavanaugh has also been accused of exposing himself to a classmate, Deborah Ramirez, during an alcohol-fueled Yale University party a few years later.

On Wednesday, a third woman, Julie Swetnick, came forward with explosive allegations, saying she witnessed sexually abusive behavior by Kavanaugh when he was a teenager.