Democratic Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and his accuser hired the same attorneys involved in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s heated confirmation process, in another parallel between the two figures accused of sexual assault.
Fairfax engaged Wilkinson Walsh Eskovitz in January 2018 after the Washington Post last year began investigating allegations by Vanessa Tyson that Fairfax sexually assaulted her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, NPR and local media outlets reported. Wilkinson Walsh Eskovitz did not confirm to the Washington Examiner that they had been retained by Fairfax.
Wilkinson Walsh Eskovitz helped Kavanaugh navigate his appointment to the highest court in the country amid high-profile sexual misconduct accusations, as research psychologist Christine Blasey Ford alleged that he drunkenly forced himself on her during a high school party in the 1980s. Kavanaugh vehemently denied Blasey Ford’s claims.
Tyson, a Scripps College politics professor, is represented by Blasey Ford’s firm, Katz, Marshall & Bank. Fairfax has said their single encounter in a hotel room was consensual.
The Fairfax controversy surfaced shortly after his boss, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, became embroiled in one of his own related to a racist photo found in his 1984 medical school yearbook.
Northam so far has refused to bow to increasing pressure to resign over the situation stemming from a photo that shows one man dressed up in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb. Northam denies he was in the photo, but he has admitted to wearing blackface for a Michael Jackson costume in the 1980s.
Fairfax is the next in line to be governor if Northam steps down.
