Emails traded between the legal team of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, and a Republican Senate Judiciary Committee staffer reveal that the Republican aide stonewalled first steps to get Ramirez’s testimony, according to a Friday New Yorker article.
In the emails, Ramirez’s lawyer John Clune said that his client had evidence and witnesses pertaining to her claim of sexual misconduct, and that she may be willing to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee even without the FBI investigation she preferred. However, he wanted to have a call with the members of the committee to ensure her protection in the process before she released all of her information.
In response, Republican staffer Mike Davis refused to have a phone call to hammer out the logistics without more evidence than she had already provided in her original account in the New Yorker and an unequivocal agreement to testify to committee investigators no matter the terms.
A Democratic staffer on the email thread jumped in.
“As you’re aware, Ms. Ramirez’s counsel have repeatedly requested to speak with the Committee, on a bipartisan basis, to determine how to proceed. You refused,” staffer Heather Sawyer said, per the New Yorker. “I’ve never encountered an instance where the Committee has refused even to speak with an individual or counsel. I am perplexed as to why this is happening here, except that it seems designed to ensure that the Majority can falsely claim that Ms. Ramirez and her lawyers refused to cooperate. That simply is not true.”
On Friday, during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s speeches preceding the vote on Kavanaugh, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) doubled down on his insistence that his staff had done all they could to reach Ramirez and get her testimony, but that they were stymied by her lack of cooperation.
