A Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday the rationale for hiring a sex-crimes prosecutor to question Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and one of his accusers at Thursday’s hearing was to bring in someone with a certain level of expertise with sexual assault cases.
“What we’re talking about on our side is to hire someone who has experience in ferreting out information in cases of allegations of sexual assault,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters on Capitol Hill when asked why Republicans hired an outside prosecutor to pose questions to Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused the nominee of sexual assault.
“Dr. Ford was very specific in some of her requests: she wanted one camera; she wants frequent breaks; she doesn’t want a circus-like atmosphere,” Kennedy added.
Sen. Chris Coons (Del.), a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters Tuesday that he was “struck” that Republicans would hire “an outside prosecutor who’s alleged to be a specialist in sex-crime prosecution to question Dr. Ford rather than having Republican senators” question the witnesses.
One of Ford’s attorneys this week criticized the suggestion of having an outside prosecutor involved in the hearing.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has not released the name of the prosecutor, citing safety reasons. Kavanaugh and Ford have reportedly received death threats ever since Ford went public last week with her allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in 1982.
Deborah Ramirez went public this week with her accusation that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a college party in the early 1980s.
— Molly K. Hooper
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