#5 in NEWS 1130’S Top 10 of 2018: Brett Kavanaugh becomes U.S. Supreme Court Justice

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It triggered massive protests and political unrest for weeks, while the ultimate outcome of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings will echo through the land for decades. Coming in at #5, the saga of Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court.

Christine Blasey Ford detailed every woman’s worst nightmare in front of a senate judiciary hearing in September, accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct at a high school party in the 1980s.

“Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was so drunk, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under my clothes,” she testified.

“I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.”

Her words echoed across the world, resonating with women and victims of sexual violence who were finding their voices in an era of #MeToo solidarity.

But Kavanaugh denied nearly everything Ford said and found vehement support in key Republicans who would eventually solidify his confirmation to the court with a vote of 50-48.

The consequences of Trump’s nominee sitting on the highest court will not only be felt in the judicial sense but have dealt a major blow to the women’s movement, according to Ann Murphy, a law professor at Washington State’s Gonzaga University.

“I think a lot of women will think again before they come forward, because of the treatment that [Ford] received,” says Murphy, pointing out that Ford was forced to give up her job and move multiple times due to vitriolic backlash she faced.

LISTEN: NEWS 1130’s Ash Kelly looks back on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing

 

What went down?

Ford said she was “100 per cent certain” Kavanaugh was the man who assaulted her and said she came feeling it was her civic duty, while Kavanaugh defended his innocence.

She had written a letter to her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, regarding her concerns about Kavanaugh being on a nominee shortlist in early July.

Three days later Donald Trump announced Kavanaugh was his pick to replace the late Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Ford again raised her concerns, this time with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, detailing the accusations in a letter. On September 16th, The Washington Post made Ford’s story front page news.

Kavanaugh immediately issued a statement denying any wrongdoing.

By the time Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing was set to begin, Ford had already agreed to testify in front of the senate judicial committee and it would only be days before two more women put their names behind claims that Kavanaugh assaulted them.

A professor of Psychology at Palo Alto University and a Research Psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, she was lauded as a credible witness even by the senate committee.

Still, she received a number of death threats and had her “world turned upside down,” as soon as she went public, say her lawyers.

Watch: Kavanaugh denies Ford accusation

 

Kavanaugh accused Ford of testifying as part of an orchestrated plan to exact revenge on behalf of “angry Democrats,” out to deliver a political blow to President Trump.

He also called the allegations an attempt to smear him as an act of revenge for the Clintons after the bitter 2016 election, conjecture that was called “openly-partisan” and “inappropriate” for a judge to express.

Throughout the testimony Kavanaugh broke into tears, defending himself and becoming heated during several exchanges with members of the committee.

Kavanaugh rambled at times about how much beer he did or did not drink during his youth, maintaining that he never drank to such excess he would forget or “black-out.”

Supporters said he nailed it as he earned the sympathies of many Americans glued to the hearing.

One of those supporters was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who erupted during the hearing calling it an “unethical sham” and telling Kavanaugh “you have nothing to apologize for!”

Holding eye contact with senators from across the aisle, he accused Democrats of playing political chess in an attempt to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

“What you want to do is destroy this guys life, hold this seat open, hope you win in 2020,” he boomed in front of the committee.

Assessing the disparity in opinions, professor Murphy says “whether you believed one or the other had to do with where you are on the political spectrum.”

Watch: Reaction to dramatic Kavanaugh-Ford testimony

 

Where are they now?

“This is a circus,” Kavanaugh told the committee.

“The consequences will be with us for decades,” he said. “This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our good country.”

Murphy agrees with parts of Kavanaugh’s assessment: “The consequences will be with us for decades,” in both the courts and society at large.

The message she says, is that no matter how credible you are, you will not be believed when it counts and that will make many women reconsider naming their assailants or coming forward with any of their own stories.

She looks at how both Kavanaugh and Ford have fared in the aftermath of the hearings and says that tells us a lot about how far society has to come to truly support victims of sexual violence.

“She lost everything,” Murphy says of Ford. “I think she’ll forever be judged as a hero to a lot of women.”

In early December Lisa Banks, co-counsel to Ford, told the Wall Street Journal that Ford was still receiving threats credible enough to keep her from moving back into her home.

Ford was forced to move her family out of their home and now has a full security detail with her at all times.

“From her point of view, this was extremely difficult to come forward and I don’t know that she’d do it again. The treatment was not so bad at the senate but it was really bad in her home life,” says Murphy.

On the other hand, Kavanaugh is now in a position to influence the law of the land for a generation and is greeted with applause when he makes public appearances.

In November, Kavanaugh was greeted with a standing ovation at an appearance at the right-wing Federalist Society.

Influence on the courts

Kavanaugh is not even the most conservative sitting judge, though his confirmation does weigh the bench to the right, says Murphy.

“t’s not as if we’ve never been here, but we haven’t been here in a while,” she says of the court’s right-leaning composition.

Murphy says he is likely to follow marching orders from the White House when it comes to cases involving immigration, abortion and gun rights, even though there is supposed to be a clear and permanent separation between the judicial and administrative branches of government.

And she points to the Trump administration’s efforts to “leap-frog” lower courts with cases involving those issues in an attempt to have a now Conservative-leaning bench vote their way.

“[Trump] wants to do this because he’s not been getting the rulings he wants,” says Murphy.

One of those cases involves whether or not transgender people can be in the army. Murphy says Trump is trying to have the case skip a lower court in the hopes the Supreme Court will vote the way he wants them to.

“When it’s those social issues, that’s when you’re going to have a lot of interesting results,” she says of the future of the U.S justice system.

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