Their suspicions about the discretion of the broader group confirmed, the core Kavanaugh team resolved to get rid of any nonessential aides. Contrary to the press reports, they felt he had handled the moot so well that another moot could be counterproductive. They didn’t want him to go into the hearing sounding scripted.
Kavanaugh also spoke by telephone to the Judiciary Committee staff under penalty of felony on Monday. He “unequivocally denied” the allegations. Democratic staff members could have asked any question they wanted, but they declined to participate in the interview. Kavanaugh requested a hearing right away, the next day if possible. He knew that with each passing day the media would elaborate on their portrait of a sexual predator and activists would redouble their search for dirt.
The Judiciary Committee staff tried to talk to Ford on Sunday after her name was revealed and again on Monday when her attorney said she wanted to share her story with them. Ford’s attorneys refused the requests, according to a Senate report.16
Grassley preferred a private information-gathering process to a public hearing, which was likely to become a circus. He had spent decades protecting whistle-blowers who made serious allegations, and in June he had held a full committee hearing on sexual harassment in the federal judiciary. He wanted to provide Ford a safe, comfortable, and dignified way to tell her story, even if he didn’t want the entire judicial confirmation process held hostage.
But by late afternoon on Monday, nearly all the Republicans on the committee wanted to offer Ford a hearing. Kavanaugh also wanted a public hearing to clear his name. The White House had heard from Senator Ben Sasse, who advised them to take the allegations as seriously as possible, citing his experience as a college president.
A committee business meeting had been scheduled for Thursday, September 20, the date they had expected to vote Kavanaugh out of committee, and some White House staff members hoped a second hearing could be held then. But because notice of the witnesses appearing had to be given a week in advance, Grassley could not schedule it earlier than Monday, the twenty-fourth. Katz had now repeatedly said on television that Ford wished to testify, so Grassley went ahead and scheduled hearings. Senator John Kennedy spilled the beans as he exited the meeting with Republican colleagues where the decision was made.
Perhaps unknowingly, Republicans had called Katz’s bluff. She immediately shifted to a different strategy, demanding that the FBI investigate the allegation before Ford testified.17 Democrats, while boycotting the committee’s own investigative efforts, joined her in insisting that the FBI should be given time to do a full investigation. The Department of Justice explained on Monday that the FBI had not been called on because the allegation did not involve any federal crime and the letter had already been added to his background information file according to the usual procedure.18
The Kavanaugh team’s worries about the dangers of delay were soon borne out. In contrast to the skepticism with which the press treated the supportive letter from Kavanaugh’s female friends and colleagues the previous week, it lavished favorable coverage on a letter signed by alumnae of Holton-Arms, described as a “response” to the first letter.19 The signatures had been collected quickly, as had the signatures to the letter in support of Kavanaugh, but this time there was no suggestion that such speed was suspicious. Unlike the pro-Kavanaugh letter, it was signed overwhelmingly by people who didn’t actually know the person they were vouching for, but their support was treated as relevant to her credibility nonetheless.20 The Washington Post’s report, under the headline “As Conservatives Attack, Hundreds Sign Letters Supporting Kavanaugh Accuser Christine Blasey Ford,” remarked that one of the letters of support “directly challenges the narratives being thrown at Ford—alleged political bias; the decades-long delay in making the allegations—to impugn her character.”
The media, however, were not even reporting the “challenges to the narrative,” to the exasperation of many of Ford’s contemporaries in Washington. Nor were they reporting the dismay of Holton-Arms alumnae at the school’s public support of Ford. Sara Hayes, an alumna, said she had never “been more disappointed nor felt more detached from a school” she loved, decrying the “rush to judgment” and the “presumption of guilt” that the school was espousing.
The next day, Tuesday, September 18, Ford’s lawyers finally responded to the many attempts by the staff of the Judiciary Committee to schedule an interview and prepare for a hearing. The attorneys complained that Ford had been forced out of her home by violent messages targeting her and her family, that her email had been hacked, and that she had been impersonated online.21 Kavanaugh, of course, was enduring similar problems but cooperated by telephone.
Despite having called for a Senate hearing the day before, Ford’s attorneys angrily denounced Grassley for expecting her “to testify at the same table as Judge Kavanaugh in front of two dozen U.S. Senators on national television to relive this traumatic and harrowing incident.”22 Allowing Republican senators who had approached Ford’s account with skepticism to question her, they suggested, would be an outrage. “[N]o sexual assault survivor should be subjected to such an ordeal,” they declared, as though the allegations should be believed without respectful investigation.23
Democrats continued to demand an FBI investigation despite the lack of federal jurisdiction and Ford’s vagueness about the location and date of the alleged attack. The media joined in the call, raising no questions about the practicality of asking the FBI to investigate an allegation with so few verifiable details. A Democratic state senator in Maryland even asked the governor to have the state police investigate the attack. He declined, but the local police later said they would investigate if Ford filed a complaint.24 She never did.25
In response to condemnations of the Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee for not accepting Ford’s allegations at face value, Grassley said on Wednesday the committee was “doing everything” it could to make Ford feel comfortable, and he offered her four different ways to deliver her testimony: an open session or a closed session, as well as public or private interviews.26 They even offered to send female Senate investigators to California to talk to her. The committee’s efforts met with no response from Ford and her lawyers and were ignored by the media and other senators.
Grassley’s assertion that Republican committee staffers had done everything they could to reach Ford, said Senator Mazie Hirono, was “bulls—t.”27 By that point, the committee had sent nine emails and left two voicemail messages. The same senator would later tell the press, “And I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.”28 But Ford’s refusal to answer the committee finally began to hurt her case. Some conservatives were encouraging the Senate to proceed to a vote if Ford did not show up at the hearing.29 Even ABC News’s Cokie Roberts said Ford needed to stop delaying and testify.30
Kavanaugh’s opponents still felt they held a strong hand. Democratic strategists began planning the campaign that would follow their sinking of the nomination, promising to “turn the midterms into a referendum not just on President Trump but also women’s rights, abortion and the future of the Supreme Court.”31