NEW YORK — President Donald Trump on Monday continued to stand behind his embattled Supreme Court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh, calling him “an outstanding person” and dismissing a second woman’s accusation of sexual misconduct as being part of an “unfair, unjust” political attack.
Trump, leaving the United Nations after a short morning meeting on the first day of the annual opening session of the General Assembly, stopped to answer reporters’ shouted questions about Sunday night’s New Yorker story reporting an allegation by a Yale University classmate, Deborah Ramirez, that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her 35 years ago while the two were freshmen.
The news has further roiled plans in the Senate Judiciary Committee for a vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
“There’s a chance that this could be one of the single most unfair, unjust things to happen to a candidate for anything,” Trump said. “But I am with Judge Kavanaugh and I look forward to a vote.”
Trump also cast doubt on Ramirez’s allegation — just as he did last week for the earlier accusation by Christine Blasey Ford of an attack by Kavanaugh when they both were in high school — that the charge might be untrue because the alleged victim had not publicly complained and sought legal action before.
“For people to come out of the woodwork from 36 years ago and from 30 years ago … never mention it and all of the sudden it happens … in my opinion, it’s totally political,” Trump said. “It’s totally political.”
Kavanaugh called the allegation from Ramirez “another false and uncorroborated accusation from 35 years ago” and pledged that he won’t back down from his nomination.
“These are smears, pure and simple. And they debase our public discourse,” he wrote in a letter to the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa. “But they are also a threat to any man or woman who wishes to serve our country. Such grotesque and obvious character assassination — if allowed to succeed — will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from service.”
The Kavanaugh controversy is likely to overshadow Trump’s week of meetings at the U.N., where he is set to deliver his second annual address to the General Assembly on Tuesday.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation path has already slowed, with the Judiciary Committee having rescheduled a Monday vote after lawmakers and attorneys for the judge’s first accuser, Ford, agreed over the weekend to hold a Thursday hearing at which both she and Kavanaugh would separately testify.
Republicans have been intent on confirming Kavanaugh ahead of November’s midterm elections, hoping the conservative’s placement on the nation’s highest court would animate Republican voters and avert a possible Senate takeover by Democrats.
Trump and party allies, eager to portray the allegations against Kavanaugh as part of a political attack orchestrated by Democrats, have fixed on the attorneys representing the judge’s accusers.
Ramirez hired former Boulder, Colo., district attorney Stan Garnett, a Democrat who ran for state attorney general, to represent her. And Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, who has alleged a past sexual affair with Trump, and who is exploring a Democratic presidential bid himself, claimed on Sunday that he represents a third, yet-unidentified woman ready to level similar accusations against Kavanaugh.
“These are highly unsubstantiated statements from people represented by lawyers,” Trump said Monday. “You should look into the lawyers doing the representation.”
——
(Los Angeles Times staff writer Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.)
——
©2018 Los Angeles Times
Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
———
PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): KAVANAUGH
Democrats are really off the rails. No wonder the #Walkaway movement is growing.