President Donald Trump is standing firm behind his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a second allegation of decades-ago sexual misconduct by the judge was reported in the New Yorker on Sunday. After a meeting at the United Nations in New York City Monday morning, Trump told reporters that Kavanaugh is “a fine man with an unblemished past” and that the accusations were “highly unsubstantiated” and “totally political.”
“Judge Kavanaugh is an outstanding person, and I am with him all the way,” Trump said. “We’ll see how it goes with the Senate, we’ll see how it goes with the vote. I think there’s a chance that this could be one of the single most unfair, unjust things to happen to a candidate for anything.”
The latest allegation comes from a woman named Deborah Ramirez, a former college classmate of Kavanaugh’s who has accused him of exposing himself to her at a party during their freshman year at Yale. Kavanaugh has denied the allegation, as have all other former classmates who were alleged to have been at the party who spoke to the New Yorker. Ramirez herself took six days of “carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney” before she was willing to go on the record with her accusation. According to the New York Times, Ramirez told ex-classmates last week she wasn’t certain Kavanaugh was the one who had exposed himself to her.
Ramirez’s accusation comes on the heels of that of Christine Blasey Ford, whose accusation of attempted rape at a high school party upended Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings after it was leaked to the press earlier this month. Last week, Ford’s attorneys and the Senate Judiciary Committee publicly quarreled for days about when and whether she would agree to give testimony about her accusation, and on Sunday morning the two groups reached an agreement for Ford to testify on Thursday. News of Ramirez’s accusation broke mere hours later, prompting Senate Democrats to demand Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote be postponed yet again.
Thursday’s hearing should be canceled in light of a disturbing new allegation of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh. The FBI must investigate ALL allegations.
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) September 24, 2018
“I am with Judge Kavanaugh, and I look forward to a vote,” Trump said. “For people to come out of the woodwork from 36 years ago, from 30 years ago, and never mention it, and all of a sudden it happens—in my opinion, it’s totally political.”
