Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said midway through Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday that she will “win the credibility determination” in regards to her sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In the early afternoon, senators and the witness broke for lunch and the Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany checked in with Dershowitz.
“Ford will win the credibility determination,” she quoted him saying in a tweet. “If [Republicans] were smart, they’d call Avenatti’s witness who would fall apart on cross examination… if I had to bet at this point, I’d say that we will not see Justice Kavanaugh at the Supreme Court.”
Checked in w @AlanDersh mid-hearing: “Ford will win the credibility determination. If R’s were smart, they’d call Avenatti’s witness who would fall apart on cross examination… if I had to bet at this point, I’d say that we will not see Justice Kavanaugh at the Supreme Court.”
— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) September 27, 2018
The quote referred to lawyer Michael Avenatti’s witness Julie Swetnick, who has come forward with a gang-rape allegation against Kavanaugh.
On Fox News Wednesday evening, Dershowitz said Swetnick’s affidavit is “so deeply flawed and so open-ended that any good lawyer, any good defense attorney would be able to tear that apart in 30 seconds.”
During that same interview Wednesday, Dershowitz said Senate Republicans picked the wrong person to represent them in questioning Ford.
“I want to see the greatest engine of truth ever invented used effectively, namely used a cross-examination. And I’m worried that we don’t have the right people. The woman who has been hired to conduct the cross-examination has probably rarely ever cross-examined anybody,” he said of Arizona county sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell.
Ford alleges Kavanaugh drunkenly forced himself on her at a Maryland high school party in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh, who denies that allegation and the others leveled against him by other women, will appear before the committee afterwards.
