One former clerk who wrote and spoke publicly on Kavanaugh’s behalf said she felt she had a moral imperative to do so: “You couldn’t not say anything. What if everyone who knew and cared about him decided that this is just too controversial or too contentious, or I have too much to lose, and didn’t speak up? It would have been a real tragedy.”
Despite the revelations, Grassley pushed for the committee to follow the ordinary procedure for an update to a nominee’s background file, which would have meant staff calls with Ford and Kavanaugh. But by Sunday evening, the ranking member, Senator Feinstein, had rejected the standard procedure, saying, “The FBI should have the time it needs to investigate this new material. Staff calls aren’t the appropriate way to handle this.”8
On Monday morning, the White House team gathered to prepare a response to the allegations. Most assumed that something had happened between Kavanaugh and Ford but that the details were in dispute. This would be their first chance to find out exactly what had happened so they could figure out how to craft a message in response. Their early assumptions evaporated after talking to Kavanaugh.
McGahn had already talked to Kavanaugh on Sunday, but now he joined Annie Donaldson and her husband, Brett Talley, in questioning Kavanaugh, who showed them the calendars. They were astonished that he had preserved that kind of documentation. From the beginning, Kavanaugh had been punctilious about avoiding even a whiff of perjury. He had responded to Kamala Harris’s questions with caution despite her contemptuous accusations of evasion. He had just pulled multiple all-nighters to make sure none of the 1,287 written answers he submitted to the Judiciary Committee was marred by the slightest inaccuracy. After weeks of such lawyerly precision and attention to detail, Kavanaugh’s unequivocal statement that the story was not true made a deep impression on his team. They believed him.
Everyone, including the president, wanted to fight back on every front, including in the media, in the committee, and with a hearing. Nobody considered withdrawing the nomination. They knew they might not win in the midst of a #MeToo media frenzy, but they would go down fighting. President Trump’s eagerness to fight had previously irritated Republican leaders, but now even they were thankful for it. Other Republican presidents might not have shown the same fortitude.
The battle ahead would be ferocious. Normally, the burden of proof is on the accuser, but the media were not even paying lip service to that principle. “Kavanaugh Bears the Burden of Proof,” wrote the legal journalist Ben Wittes, a former defender of Kavanaugh.9 The team also understood that any criticism of Ford would be treated as a smear. It wasn’t that they didn’t have damaging information about her. Reports had poured in as soon as her name was known. The Blaseys were well known in their community, and people who knew her in high school and afterwards remembered her or had kept in touch with her. The details they were sharing about Christine’s behavior in high school and college were dramatically at odds with her presentation in the media. Some of the reports dealt with her consumption of alcohol, others with her interactions with boys and men.
While the Post had suggested that Ford was politically moderate, acquaintances reported that her social media profile, which was completely scrubbed in July, had been notable for its extreme antipathy to President Trump. It also became clear that she had previously gone by her maiden name, but the press was now careful to use her title, “Dr.,” and her married name. Some suggested that she was following sophisticated public relations advice to emphasize her relationship with her husband.
The confirmation team knew that mentioning any of this information in public would be depicted as “victim shaming,” however relevant it might be to the question of her veracity. Instead of focusing on her, the team would focus on Kavanaugh’s lifelong good reputation and the harm his opponents were inflicting on him and the country. Their instincts were right. Even though Kavanaugh’s supporters scrupulously declined to go after Ford, the media treated any skepticism about her allegations as a personal attack. “The right-wing smear machine has been lying about Christine Blasey Ford for the past two days,” wrote CNN’s chief media correspondent, Brian Stelter, after the Wall Street Journal and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson observed that memory is notoriously fallible.10
Kavanaugh’s stand-and-fight strategy was nearly stopped before it could start. On Monday morning, September 17, Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, told Fox News that Ford “should not be insulted, she should not be ignored. She should testify under oath and she should do it on Capitol Hill.”11 That’s exactly what Kavanaugh and his advisors had decided to ask for, but they were frustrated when Conway got ahead of them, fearing that their statement now would look less like a display of confidence than a concession to a skeptical White House. Still, everyone had to adapt. Even President Trump’s comments for most of the week were restrained, essentially echoing what Conway said.
Also on Monday morning, Debra Katz gave interviews to a number of television networks. She told NBC that Ford was willing to testify.12 On CNN, she revealed that Ford had spoken with Senator Feinstein soon after July 30 and retained counsel. “We were in touch” with Feinstein’s office throughout the following weeks, Katz said.13 On CBS she added that Ford was “willing to do whatever is necessary” to make sure the committee had the “full story” and, ominously, the “full set of allegations.”14
Prior to the allegations, the judicial nomination process had been handled through the White House counsel’s office, with additional help detailed from other offices in the White House and Department of Justice. When the Ford news broke, other parties in the White House tried to intervene, and squabbles were soon breaking out. Some White House surrogates were telling the media that McGahn and his team were botching the response and that President Trump was losing confidence. That wasn’t true, but there was intense pressure to allow others to help. Shah and Kerri Kupec had handled communications prior to the allegations, but the broader White House communications team now began to be more involved.
Only one large official moot was held after the Ford allegations broke, even before a hearing was officially scheduled. The White House director of communications, Bill Shine, and the press secretary, Sarah Sanders, along with a number of others, played the parts of various senators. It was important for those supporting Kavanaugh in the media to be convinced of his credibility if they were to do their jobs well. But the involvement of more persons made leaks more likely. The Kavanaugh team had been tight-lipped, priding itself on its discretion in a notoriously leaky administration. But those leading the confirmation effort thought that the advantages of broadening the team were worth the risk. To be safe, they warned Kavanaugh that he shouldn’t say anything that he didn’t want to be made public. He kept quiet about the existence of his calendars, therefore, so he could reveal them on his own timing. Shah had drafted intrusive questions for Sanders to ask, but she was too uncomfortable to do so. Another participant asked them instead.
At the end of a moot, Kavanaugh ordinarily left so the participants could discuss his performance and decide on a single strategy. After he left the room, someone interrupted the discussion to announce that the media were already reporting that Kavanaugh was mooting with the press team. Later the Washington Post cited three sources who reported that “Kavanaugh grew frustrated when it came to questions that dug into his private life, particularly his drinking habits and his sexual proclivities.”15 They added that he declined to answer some questions altogether, which made it sound like he had something to hide. In fact, one of the goals of the moot had been to determine the right place to draw a line on invasive questions, and the only question he had ultimately declined to answer was when he had first slept with his wife.