Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) set a 10 p.m. Friday night deadline for his Judiciary Committee staffers and Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers to craft a deal for her testimony against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
If both sides can’t agree by then on how the California professor would testify next week, then the panel will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination on Monday, Grassley said.
“It’s Friday night and nothing’s been agreed to despite our extensive efforts to make testimony possible,” Grassley said hours before the deadline.
“I’m extending the deadline for response yet again to 10 o’clock this evening. I’m providing a notice of a vote to occur Monday in the event that Dr. Ford’s attorneys don’t respond or Dr. Ford decides not to testify. In the event that we can come to a reasonable resolution as I’ve been seeking all week, then I will postpone the committee vote to accommodate her testimony. We cannot continue to delay.”
Ford, a psychology professor, accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were high school students.
Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegations.
As the 10 p.m. deadline approached, a lawyer for Ford asked for another day to consider the committee’s terms for testifying.
“The 10:00 p.m. deadline is arbitrary,” according to a statement from her attorney Debra Katz. “Its sole purpose is to bully Dr. Ford and deprive her of the ability to make a considered decision. Our modest request is that she be given an additional day to make her decision.”
The Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of “bullying” Ford.
She said Republicans want to dismiss Ford’s accusations, comparing this moment to the Anita Hill hearings of 1991. Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, before the Senate went on to confirm the pick of President George H.W. Bush.
“It’s clear that Republicans have learned nothing over the last 27 years. Bullying a survivor of attempted rape in order to confirm a nominee—particularly at a time when she’s receiving death threats—is an extreme abuse of power,” Feinstein said.
