Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford say they have submitted sworn affidavits to the Senate Judiciary Committee from four people who corroborate her claims that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teens.
According to the documents, obtained by USA Today, Ford revealed the information well before President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the high court in July.
They come from Ford’s husband, Russell, and three family friends, who say she mentioned the incident in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2017.
Two affidavits — from Ford’s husband and from the coach of their son’s baseball team — say Ford named Kavanaugh as the alleged assailant. In the other two, she did not name Kavanaugh but said she was assaulted by a federal judge.
Their testimonies will reportedly be used during the California college professor’s hearing on Thursday before the committee.
Kavanaugh has denied her allegations that he pinned her to a bed, groped her and tried to pull off her clothes in 1982, when they were high school students. He also has denied claims by his Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, who said he exposed himself to her during a freshman party.
In her affidavit, Adela Gildo-Mazzon said her longtime friend told her about the alleged assault during a June 2013 meal at a restaurant in Mountain View, Calif. She said she contacted Ford’s attorneys on Sept. 16 about the matter.
“During our meal, Christine was visibly upset, so I asked her what was going on,” Gildo-Mazzon said in her statement.
“Christine told me she had been having a hard day because she was thinking about an assault she experienced when she was much younger,” she said. “She said she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge. She told me she had been trapped in a room with two drunken guys, and that she had escaped, ran away and hid.”
In a separate statement, family friend Keith Koegler said Ford mentioned the alleged assault to him in 2016, when the two parents were watching their kids play and discussing the six-month sentence of a Stanford University student for sexually assaulting a woman.
“Christine expressed anger at Mr. (Brock) Turner’s lenient sentence, stating that she was particularly bothered by it because she was assaulted in high school by a man who was now a federal judge in Washington, D.C.,” said Koegler, who met the Fords while coaching their son’s baseball team five years ago.
“Christine did not mention the assault to me again until June 29, 2018, two days after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation from the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said.
On that day, Koegler said, Ford emailed him that the person who had attacked her was President Trump’s “favorite for SCOTUS.”
“I remember you telling me about him, but I don’t remember his name. Do you mind telling me so I can read about him?” Koegler wrote back.
“Brett Kavanaugh,” Ford responded.
A third declaration was from friend and neighbor Rebecca White, who said Ford revealed the alleged assault last year after she read a social media post White wrote about her own experience with sexual assault.
“I was walking my dog and Christine was outside of her house,” White said. “I stopped to speak with her, and she told me she had read a recent social media post I had written about my own experience with sexual assault.
“She then told me that when she was a young teen, she had been sexually assaulted by an older teen,” White said. “I remember her saying that her assailant was now a federal judge.”
And in his declaration, Russell Ford said he learned of his wife’s experience “around the time we got married” but that she didn’t share details until they were in therapy in 2012.
“I remember her saying that her attacker’s name was Brett Kavanaugh, that he was a successful lawyer who had grown up in Christine’s hometown, and that he was well-known in the Washington D.C. community,” he said.
He said his wife was “afraid” the president would nominate Kavanaugh for the high court and was “very conflicted” about whether she should come forward with her account.
“However, in the end she believed her civic duty required her to speak out,” Russell Ford said. “In our 16 years of marriage I have always known Christine to be a truthful person of great integrity. I am proud of her for her bravery and courage.”
With Post wires
