And neither the nominee nor the Judiciary Committee have seen the results of Ford’s polygraph test.
C hristine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school, has not turned over notes from a 2012 therapy session in which she first described the alleged 1982 assault, according to Kavanaugh’s attorney.
Appearing on CBS This Morning to discuss the case, attorney Beth Wilkinson said that neither Kavanaugh’s team nor the Judiciary Committee had received the results of the polygraph test Ford claims to have passed, nor her therapist’s notes from the 2012 therapy session where she first described the alleged assault.
“The first time these allegations came to light, as far as we know from reading the reports in the media, Dr. Blasey told her therapist and told her husband,” Wilkinson said. “They announced that there were notes and that there had been a lie detector test, but as I understand it they did not turn any of those over to the Senate Committee, even though they were requested. So the information that would have shown what she said at the very first time when she revealed these allegations has not been turned over to the Senate.”
The 2012 notes, even in redacted form, are relevant because they are the first time Ford says she described the alleged assault in any detail. According to the Washington Post, the notes say that there were four male attackers–a discrepancy Ford attributes to the therapist–and did not mention Kavanaugh by name. Ford’s husband told the Post that she mentioned Kavanaugh at the time in 2012 and expressed concern Kavanaugh might be nominated to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh had been profiled in the New Yorker that year, when Ford was piecing together memories of the alleged assault, as the most likely next Supreme Court justice if a Republican won the 2012 presidential election.
Wilkinson’s comments came less than a day after Ford submitted as evidence affidavits from her husband and three friends, each of whom attested Ford had told them at some point since 2012 that she was assaulted as a teen (and said the assailant was now a federal judge). The declarations will likely be a key topic of discussion when the Senate Judiciary Committee interviews both Ford and Kavanaugh about the assault allegations on Thursday.
