Trump attacks credibility of Kavanaugh sex accuser

US President Donald Trump ditched restraint today in the scandal threatening his Supreme Court nominee to attack the credibility of the woman accusing the would-be justice of sexual assault when they were teens.

The US president had previously followed the Republican party line of standing by Judge Brett Kavanaugh while insisting that the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, be given a respectful, fair hearing.

But the gloves have come off, reflecting Trump’s fear that his bid to tilt the Supreme Court to the right before Republicans risk losing Congress in November elections could be in doubt.

“TAKE THE VOTE!” Trump tweeted, telling the Republican-controlled Senate to get on with the confirmation.

He rejected the credibility of Ford’s claim to have been sexually assaulted by a drunken Kavanaugh when they were at private schools near Washington, DC, 36 years ago.

In a series of tweets, Trump blamed the entire row on “radical left wing politicians” seeking to “destroy and delay” Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Ford, who has yet to give a full account in public, says the FBI should investigate her claim.

Yet according to Trump, she would have gone to the authorities immediately had the story been true — despite what experts say is the common reaction of women in sexual assault incidents to keep quiet for years out of fear or shame.

“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says,” Trump wrote, “charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.”

“Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?”

The senior Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, called Trump’s tweet “a highly offensive misunderstanding of surviving trauma.”

“1000s & 1000s of strong women have kept being assaulted to themselves for a variety of understandable reasons. The president doesn’t even try to understand trauma survivors — he’d rather use their pain for political purposes,” Schumer tweeted.

The scandal, which broke a week ago, has already delayed what seemed to be the certain confirmation of Kavanaugh.

Republicans are furious over what they say was the deliberate timing of the last-minute revelation of Ford’s allegation, accusing Democrats of seeking to disrupt the process beyond the November midterm elections where Democrats hope to recapture at least one chamber of Congress.

For their part, Democrats say Republicans are mounting an unseemly rush to get Kavanaugh into the nine-member Supreme Court while they still control the legislature.

The high-stakes political battle could reach boiling point next week.

On Monday, Kavanaugh is scheduled to testify before the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee.

A distinguished judge with conservative views, he says he wants to clear his name. He has not been accused in other sexually related cases and no other witness has come forward to corroborate Ford’s claims.

Ford’s lawyers have rejected the committee’s request that she also testify on Monday, calling it an “arbitrary” date, but said the California psychology professor is open to a later time.

That looming showdown has set Washington on edge.

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell told supporters on Friday that he had no doubt about the outcome.

“You’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics, but here is what I want to tell you: in the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court,” he said to applause.

“We’re going to plow right through it.”

Meanwhile, both the protagonists in the drama have already suffered.

Kavanaugh has seen his near coronation in the lifetime judicial appointment transformed into a fight for his basic reputation.

Ford, who until now was unknown to the wider public, finds herself a lightening rod in everything from Washington power politics to the #MeToo movement of women breaking silence on decades of workplace harassment by powerful men.

Her lawyers say the professor’s life has been turned upside down.

“She has been receiving death threats, which have been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and she and her family have been forced out of their home,” Ford’s lawyers said in a letter published by US media.

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