In sworn affidavits submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, two new names have emerged.
The first, Keith Koegler, said he has known Christine Blasey Ford and her husband for five years and found out about Ford’s sexual assault claim in the summer of 2016, shortly after Stanford student Brock Turner was sentenced for felony sexual assault.
“Christine expressed anger at [Brock] Turner’s lenient sentence, stating that she was particularly bothered by it because she was assaulted in high school by a man who was now a federal judge in Washington, D.C.,” Koegler wrote in his affidavit.
[New: A third woman accuses Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, Michael Avenatti says]
Koegler said that Ford brought up the alleged incident again in an email after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he was stepping down from the Supreme Court over the summer. “On June 29, 2018, she wrote me an email in which she stated that the person who assaulted her in high school was the president’s ‘favorite for SCOTUS,’ and identified him as Brett Kavanaugh.”
The second person to come forward identified herself as Adela Gildo-Mazzon, who said she has known Ford for 10 years.
Gildo-Mazzon said she had a dinner with Ford in 2013 where she remembers her friend was visibly upset.
“Christine told me that she had been having a hard day because she was thinking about an assault she experienced when she was much younger,” Gildo-Mazzon said in her sworn statement. “She said that she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge. She told me she was trapped in a room with two drunken guys, and that she then escaped, ran away, and hid.”
Rounding out the total of people who submitted statements were Ford’s husband, Russell, who says he learned of the Kavanaugh allegation during couples therapy in 2012, and neighbor Rebecca White, who as she previously told local media, says Ford told her of the alleged incident in 2017 involving a “federal judge.”
Ford alleges that Kavanaugh drunkenly groped her at a get-together 36 years ago, when both were in high school. Kavanaugh denies the claims, and the person identified as being in the room at the time of the assault denies Ford’s recollection of the incident.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh on Thursday regarding the allegations, and will plan to move Kavanaugh’s confirmation process forward on Friday.
Kavanaugh submitted has submitted a calendar from the summer of 1982 to the Senate Judiciary Committee to help bolster his denial.
A second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, came forward a week after Ford, claiming that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a college party at Yale more than three decades ago. It is unclear if Ramirez will testify before Congress regarding the allegations, but her lawyer said she is willing.
