Two days before Christine Blasey Ford is set to appear in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss her allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh groped her when they were in high school, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) used his floor speech Tuesday to try to dismantle her account.
McConnell said that the committee was meeting Americans’ expectations in treating Ford’s allegations “seriously” and addressing them “promptly.”
“But the American people also insist that vague, unsubstantiated, and uncorroborated allegations of 30-plus-year-old misconduct, where all the supposed witnesses either totally deny it or can’t confirm it, is nowhere near grounds to nullify someone’s career or destroy their good name,” McConnell said. “Justice matters. Evidence matters. Facts matter.”
He then brought up a potential witness identified by Blasey Ford who had gone on to a offer a statement denying knowledge of the party where the incident allegedly occurred. McConnell went on to reiterate his promise that Kavanaugh would receive an up or down vote on the floor.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), in his floor speech Tuesday, brought up McConnell’s previous claim that the allegations — which also include a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her in college — were “smears.”
“Leader McConnell owes an apology to Dr. Ford for labeling her allegations a smear job, and he should apologize to her immediately,” Schumer said.
