Related Articles
Christine Blasey Ford said in a new interview she was “devastated” in 2018 when federal investigations found no evidence to support sexual assault charges against Brett Kavanaugh.
A memo released by then-Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., in November 2018 said the Senate and FBI’s investigations found “no evidence” to substantiate any sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, including the one made by Ford. They also included a claim by a woman represented by Michael Avenatti that Kavanaugh regularly participated in “gang rape” parties, a charge so brazen that many Democrats disavowed it.
“I was devastated when that report came out,” Ford told “CBS Sunday Morning.” “I was really, really upset. That was a really difficult period that I think was the beginning of the darkest times for me.”
CBS correspondent Tracy Smith said Ford’s moment in the national spotlight was “deeply traumatizing,” bringing up death threats Ford says poured in after her accusation against Kavanaugh became public. She says they included people threatening to harm her children.
JOY BEHAR SCOLDS MALE AUDIENCE MEMBERS AT ‘THE VIEW’ WHO DIDN’T APPLAUD CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD
Christine Blasey Ford appears on “CBS Sunday Morning” on Sunday. (Screenshot/CBS Sunday Morning)
Ford told CBS the threatening letters seemed like a coordinated effort by just a few people, adding they would “have such similarity to them.”
“Do these people know each other?” she wondered. “Because how could the wording be that similar?… It’s still scary.”
Ford has been on a to promote her memoir “One Way Back,” which discusses her experiences around coming forward with her bombshell accusation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh in 2018. She’s also sat down with NPR and ABC’s “The View” this week for sympathetic interviews.
Kavanaugh at the time had been nominated for the Supreme Court by President Trump and appeared to be heading toward a relatively smooth, if typically partisan, confirmation.
Ford alleged Kavanaugh attacked her at a summer high school party when he was heavily intoxicated, saying she believed he would rape her before she was able to escape. In her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27, 2018, she described Kavanaugh and a friend laughing while she was in distress and that the incident had profoundly affected the rest of her life.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh organizes his desk before testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the third day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 6, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Kavanaugh denied the allegation, angrily calling the nomination process a “national disgrace” when he testified the same day. He and his supporters have noted Ford couldn’t produce corroborating witnesses at the time to put the two at the same party, or remember the party in question even taking place.
“This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade confident and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country,” Kavanaugh said. “And as we all know in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”
Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed to the Supreme Court in October 2018, getting only one Democratic vote in his favor from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Ford told CBS she wasn’t surprised that no one else remembered the party where the alleged attack happened because those kinds of get-togethers were such a common occurrence in their community. She didn’t think it lent weight to Kavanaugh’s story, however.
“It doesn’t bolster his story,” she said. “For survivors out there, you know it happened to you, so even if no one ever believes you or no one thought it happened, there are people that are assaulted all the time where no one else was even there, and that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
David Rutz is a senior editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @davidrutz.
