LIVE BLOG: The Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh Senate Hearings

By Splinter | September 27, 2018 | 1:54pm

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Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ford has alleged that Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted her when they were high school students in the early 1980s; Kavanaugh has emphatically denied the allegations.

The Intercept published a report on September 12 indicating that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, had withheld a “Brett Kavanaugh-related document” from her fellow Democratic members on the committee. The following day, Feinstein confirmed the existence of the document, and on September 16, Ford revealed herself as the woman who wrote a letter to Feinstein in July alleging that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager.

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Since then, two more women have come forward: Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, alleged in an interview with the New Yorker that Kavanaugh assaulted her at a party when the two were freshmen. Another woman, Julie Swetnick, came forward on Wednesday to allege that Kavanaugh was “present” when she was gang raped at a party in 1982. It’s unclear whether Ramirez or Swetnick will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee before Kavanaugh’s nomination comes to a vote; currently, his committee vote is scheduled for Friday at 9:30 AM ET.

On Wednesday, Kavanaugh released the opening statement he will give to the committee, in which he called the various allegations against him “last minute smears” that “debase our public discourse.” Ford has not released her testimony as of yet, but has released the results of a polygraph test and sworn affidavits from four people, including her husband, who say that she had disclosed the assault to them prior to this year.

Below is our liveblog of the hearing, which promises to be a watershed moment in American history.

Watch a livestream of the hearing here: