The Daily - Will Dr. Blasey Testify?

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault, has said she wants the F.B.I. to investigate her claims. We look at what that means for the Supreme Court confirmation process. Guest: Peter Baker, who covers the White House for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the woman accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault now says she wants an FBI investigation into her claims. What that means for the confirmation process. It's Wednesday, September 19th. As we come on the air in the West, we do have breaking news involving President Trump's embattled Supreme Court nominee.

Peter, it's Tuesday evening, and we have yet another development in this story. What is going on? Breaking news just in the last few minutes. New tonight, a letter from the accuser. A letter that her attorneys have just moments ago sent to committee chairman Chuck Grassley. Well, at this point, the climactic hearing that everybody expected for next Monday that would pit Judge Kavanaugh against his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, now looks like it may or may not happen. We're not sure. Peter Baker covers the White House for The Times. Dr. Blasey,

the university professor from California, has said that she wants to have her allegations investigated first by the FBI. And this is the bottom line. And I'm quoting, as the Judiciary Committee has recognized and done before, an FBI investigation of the incident should be the first step in addressing her allegations. That, of course, even if it was granted as a request, couldn't happen probably before Monday. And so the question is at this point,

where we go from here? Nobody knows for sure. A full investigation by law enforcement officials will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a nonpartisan manner and that the committee is fully informed before conducting any hearings or making any decisions. She doesn't explicitly say she wouldn't appear before the committee

if there's not an FBI investigation, but that's sort of the import you take from what she's saying. You're saying your client will not sit down Monday for a public hearing. There's no reason that we should have a public hearing on Monday, given what has occurred and when it has occurred. Asking her to come forward in four or five days and sit before the Judiciary Committee on national TV

is not a fair process. So, Peter, why were we reporting on Monday and much of Tuesday that this hearing was going ahead for next week with both Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey testifying? Well, remember, yesterday her lawyer said that she wanted to testify and she would agree to if she was asked. And then Senate Republicans who didn't want her to testify, didn't want anybody to testify, relented by the end of the day, said, fine, we'll have a hearing and we'll have it Monday. Thank you for listening. Pleased to welcome back now the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Let's get right to it. Will the hearing on Monday be televised? Yeah. So I think everybody then took that the next step and assumed, well,

she said she wanted to testify and they've now agreed to have a hearing. This must be happening. Has Dr. Ford accepted and she has agreed to come? No. She didn't actually communicate a yes to this specific date, this specific time. We have reached out to her in the last 36 hours, three or four times by email, and we've not heard from them. So it kind of raises the question, do they want to do they want to come to the public hearing or not? So, you know, we're in a situation here where, in some ways, she asked to have a chance to testify, but she doesn't like the circumstances under which they are creating that opportunity. So we made an assumption, it seems safe, and now it doesn't.

Well, I mean, you know, the chairman of the committee said he's got a hold of hearing, and he could subpoena her if he wanted to you know, the chairman of the committee said he's got a hold of hearing, and he could subpoena her if he wanted to. And when the chairman of the committee says he's got a hold of hearing, you assume he's got a hold of hearing. It's pretty unusual to have a witness say, yeah, I'm not so comfortable with that. Now, mind you, she hasn't said yet

she won't come on Monday. What she said is she thinks the FBI should investigate first. It's not clear what that kind of investigation would look like. There's not a federal crime here that we know of. The allegation would be sexual assault, which would be under state statute. And of course, it would be 30 some years ago. So the question then would be, could the FBI investigate anyway because the committee asked

them to? I presume if the chairman of the Judiciary Committee asked the FBI to investigate or to reopen the background check for a nominee that they presumably could do so, what they could actually do to clear this up is unclear to me. Why? Well, there are very few people, witnesses. There's no forensic evidence. It would be a hard, hard thing, I think, to prove dispositively yes or no, that it did happen or didn't happen. And so what they might be able to do is provide more details, more information, more context that might help senators come to some judgment. But my guess is it would not be the kind of proof that would be 100% persuasive either way. The other thing about an FBI investigation

is it can go on for an awfully long time depending on how you structure it. And that may be an important factor here. Is the kind of thing that would take weeks? Would it take months? Is it something that would push it past the election? That's something that the senators are gonna be acutely aware of.

So inadvertently or not, Dr. Blasey's desire to have the FBI investigate this first is good news for Democrats, bad news for Republicans. Well, it lines up with what the Democrats have been saying, whether it's good news or bad news, I don't know. Chairman Grassley must postpone the vote. The Democrats, having gotten this hearing agreed to by the Republicans, are saying, well, wait a second, you're just rushing it at this point. With allegations as serious as the ones before us, the Senate must not, it cannot, conduct a haphazard slipshod review of Dr. Ford's claims or be rushed to a vote. How can you have a hearing in just a few days without doing any kind of research or investigation, due diligence? You're just trying to get this over with quickly so you

can rush a vote. We must not repeat the mistake of the Anita Hill hearings. They were rushed and were a debacle. Do we want to repeat that mistake? So her position, whether she intends it or not, is in line with where the Democrats have been coming out on this. And will there only be two witnesses on Monday? Yes. And what Republicans have been describing about this hearing was not a

full-fledged kind of investigation where they brought in lots of witnesses. What they seem to be aiming for was a hearing from Judge Kavanaugh and hearing from his accuser, Dr. Blasey, in effect setting up a he said, she said scenario. But obviously that raises questions about whether they're trying to move past her allegations as quickly as possible because we're facing an election in just six weeks from after this hearing. And you've not had such an explosive kind of confirmation hearing so close to a midterm election in modern times.

And nobody knows how that's going to affect the campaign. Nobody knows whether, in fact, they could get this nomination through before the election. If they can't get it through before the election, it's very possible that the Democrats might control the Senate come January, and then it's a whole new ballgame. And is there a version of this where the hearings move ahead without Dr. Blasey? You know, I don't know if they've spoken about that today, but I could see that happening, just to give him a chance to publicly refute the allegations and, in his view, clear his name.

The Republicans would presumably take this and say, well, see, she came forward and lodged this complaint against him, but then wouldn't show up when we gave her an opportunity to tell her story. And that would leave his as the only, you know, sort of televised word on the record that people could see.

That could play different ways. That could play in the way of voters looking at that and saying, okay, I've heard him and I don't hear anybody persuasively countering him. Or it could play the other way around. It looks like they're giving her the bum's rush. So both sides really don't have a firm hold on what the best way to handle this is, either substantively or politically. It's kind of hard for me to imagine just hearing from Kavanaugh and not from Dr. Blasey. I mean, would that satisfy the moderate Republicans and the Democrats who have said that they are not comfortable voting on this until they can get to the bottom of this accusation?

I think for the White House at this point, there are no Democrats in play. The only question is the Republicans and whether or not they can hold their 51 votes. they can hold their 51 votes. There are four or five Republicans who are thought to be potential swing voters, including particularly Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee.

So we don't know whether or not a hearing proceeding without her would satisfy them. But it would certainly, you know, if they wanted to vote for him and they wanted to find a reason to say, well, we gave her a chance and she didn't take advantage of it, they could presumably say that. But it's really going to come down to what they think is the best way forward here. So let's say that this hearing moves ahead, just maybe delayed by a few days, by a few weeks.

just may be delayed by a few days, by a few weeks. My understanding is that you have been reporting on how the White House is preparing for and thinking about these hearings. And what have you learned from that reporting? Well, I think that the defense that you're going to see, the one that seems to be emerging, is that it's a case of mistaken identity, that they're not going to attack Dr. Blasey

and her credibility in a direct way. They're not going to attack Dr. Blasey and her credibility in a direct way. They're not going to say this didn't happen. What they're going to say is that Judge Kavanaugh didn't do this. And so if she was subjected to this terrible ordeal, if she was assaulted the way she describes it, it must have been somebody else. Now, that may not be persuasive to many people, but Judge Kavanaugh has left no wiggle room in his denial. And therefore, if it's not what he says or she says, the only other possibility is that there's some confusion there. So I talked to him on the phone today. And what did he say to you? Well, he didn't do that. And he wasn't at the party. So, you know, there's clearly somebody's mixed up. You heard Senator

Hatch talk about this yesterday. And you believe him? Yeah, I sure do. Do you believe the accusers at all? Well, I think she's mistaken. I think she's mistaken something. After speaking to Judge Kavanaugh, he says, I think she was mixed up.

She was confused with somebody else, perhaps. Well, I couldn't believe it when I heard she was accusing Brett of this, and I immediately knew we had to rally around and support him, because that was not the Brett Kavanaugh we knew. Some of Judge Kavanaugh's friends have raised that. Hopefully, the woman will come forward, state her case.

He will state his case. And you see that President Trump is not going after Dr. Blasey directly saying that she shouldn't be believed. In fact, he's saying she should be heard. They will look at what she had to say from 36 years ago, and we will see what happens. Hmm. It sounds like the strategy of mistaken identity, of questioning whether or not she remembers the right person

doing these alleged things to her is a result of really two factors. Judge Kavanaugh's categorical denial and the fact that we are in a moment where trying to challenge a woman's story of sexual harassment, of questioning its credibility, is very perilous.

Well, that's right. So in that atmosphere, it would be a political big risk to attack her credibility and say she was making this up. So if they can't do that, and if Judge Kavanaugh insists nothing of the sort happened, nothing even that was misconstrued or any kind of, you know, different version of the same event,

which is one possibility, except that he's now ruled that same event, which is one possibility, except that he's now ruled that out. Since that is the case, this idea of mistaken identity is both as a matter of the substance and as a matter of the, you know, the strategy, the place where they seem to be coming around. So you can imagine a series of questions that respectfully engage Dr. Blasey. Say, we know something happened to you, we just think it was somebody else. Right, exactly. In other words, they're able to convey a certain level of sympathy and humanity,

but challenge the face and the identity of the accused. Right, that's the idea. Now, of course, that could easily backfire too. You know, it could come across as insulting, or she could be insulted, feel offended, that they would question her remembering this. You can certainly imagine that somebody who's undergone this kind of an ordeal would say, I certainly know who I was pinned down on that bed with, and that that could backfire in a big way, too. So this is such a volatile and uncertain moment that nobody knows how this would play out, especially if it does get to a hearing with the two of them in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Right. Even this strategy seems like a tough line to walk in this moment.

We believe the woman, but not entirely. Yeah. Again, as a matter of strategy, what they need to do is hold on to these Republicans who might waver. And if the Republicans find that there's an alternative to her version of events, her account, then it's possible they might still version of events, of her account, then it's possible they might still vote for him because they would say, well, this was a long time ago. We can't be proven.

Maybe she had somebody else in mind. We shouldn't make assumptions that he did this absent more evidence. But again, it could play both ways. And I think that the moment is so fraught, this issue is so hot, and the consequences are so large that it could still play out in many, many different ways. There's no question that things have changed enough in this moment that the strategy for how to deal with this allegation from Dr. Blasey is different.

Because Republicans can't handle it the way that they handled the allegations from Anita Hill. They can't ignore it. They can't crush the character of the woman making the allegation, Dr. Blasey. But I guess I'm wondering if things have changed in a more meaningful way, such that Republicans are genuinely concerned that these allegations are true, and that if they are true, that it would be very concerning to them that their vote would be in question, that they might oppose him? Or are they just looking for the strategy that in this moment gets their nominee through, gets Judge Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court?

It's very easy to look at Washington through a cynical lens because, in fact, Washington acts so cynically all the time. You know, things that are so personal and so traumatic as what we're talking about here are filtered through the lens of partisan politics. Who's up? Who's down? Who's going to win? Who's going to lose? How do you get what you want? And what you want is to get them on the court or keep them from getting on the court. And in the process, very real human beings are caught up in this and they will be scarred forever. I think at the same time, people in politics in Washington,

you know, at least many of them, have a human side too, and they do actually want to know what happened. And they do find these allegations troubling, and they do worry about putting somebody on the Supreme Court who is honorable and who is not the kind of person that has been described in these allegations. But there's no question that politics is the name of the game here and that in the end, you know, it's hard for people in the middle of the arena to escape that and to not have that at least factor into their calculations.

I was so struck by the quote from the friends of Dr. Blasey saying, this is her worst nightmare. And I thought to myself, this is probably his worst nightmare too. Well, I think it really is both of them. I mean, here's the thing, you know, like I was talking to some friends of his, like, and they're mixed, right?

So friends of his, like, there are some who are very upset on his behalf. They think, you know, he's got a wife, he's got two kids, then look what he's going through. Look how his name has been brought through the mud. And their view is even if he did something terrible a long time ago, when you're drunk, you're 17, blah, blah, blah. He's been an exemplary life ever since.

That would be their point. But I've also talked to friends who say, look, I really hope this is not true because this is so inconsistent with the guy I know. And I would be terribly disturbed to learn that he could do this kind of thing. And even his friends say, look, why on earth would she come forward if she wasn't telling the truth? What would be her motive for doing it? She has less to gain by making a false assertion than he has to gain by making a false denial, right? And so everybody, I think, is wrestling with these things, even the people who are close to the participants and trying to sort out, you know, conflicting truths and conflicting feelings. to sort out, you know, conflicting truths and conflicting feelings.

Peter, thank you very much. Oh, thank you very much. On Tuesday night, in response to the request from Dr. Blassie's lawyer, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, said that no FBI investigation of Judge Kavanaugh was warranted and that the invitation for Dr. Blassie to testify on Monday still stands. Earlier in the day, during a news conference at the White House, President Trump had expressed sympathy for Judge Kavanaugh's situation.

I feel so badly for him that he's going through this, to be honest with you. I feel so badly for him. This is not a man that deserves this. Meanwhile, the Times reports that because of a growing number of death threats, Dr. Blasey has moved out of her house, is arranging for private security for her family,

and is effectively in hiding. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, in the latest chapter of a tit-for-tat trade war, China said it would impose tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods, taxing nearly everything China buys from the U.S. The move was retaliation for new U.S. tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods,

tariffs President Trump praised on Tuesday at the White House. And the way I look at it, last year we lost over $500 billion to China. We can't do that. I don't want to do that. And that's been going on for many years. Other presidents should have taken care of the situation, and they didn't, but I'm going to. The Times reports that up until this week, China has been able to match the U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar, but has run out of U.S. products to tax and is looking for other ways to respond, such as withholding key components from American products or encouraging boycotts

of American goods. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.