Christine Blasey Ford Agrees to Senate Testimony, but Details Still Unclear [UPDATED]

Update, Sunday, 4:10 p.m.: Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers said on Sunday that Ford will testify in an open hearing on Thursday at 10 a.m.

“Despite actual threats to her safety and her life, Dr. Ford believes it is important for Senators to hear directly from her about the sexual assault committed against her,” a statement from her lawyers said.

Some details remain to be seen, such as whether senators or attorneys will interview Ford.

Ford’s lawyers expressed dismay that the Senate Judiciary Committee would not subpoena witness Mark Judge, who Ford says was in the room when the alleged attack happened.

“They have also refused to invite other witnesses who are essential for a fair hearing that arrives at the truth about the sexual assault,” the lawyers stated, according to CNN.

Original post continues here:

Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her decades ago, said their client will speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. But they asked to continue negotiating the terms of that hearing.

In a statement to committee staff on Saturday, attorneys Debra Katz and Lisa Banks said, “Dr. Ford accepts the Committee’s request to provide her first-hand knowledge of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct next week.”

Ford’s lawyers added that they are “disappointed with the leaks and the bullying that have tainted the process.” They asked for continued negotiations to reach an agreement on the details.

GOP Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley tweeted late Friday night that he and Kavanaugh had “granted another extension” to Ford to “decide if she wants to proceed w the statement she made last week to testify to the senate.”

He added: “She shld decide so we can move on I want to hear her. I hope u understand. It’s not my normal approach to b indecisive.”

Grassley had given Ford’s attorneys a 2:30 p.m. ET deadline on Saturday to reply with a decision, CNN reported. That followed a 5 p.m. ET deadline on Friday that was twice extended.

Grassley threatened to hold a committee vote on Monday about whether to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate if Ford didn’t reply by the deadlines, which her attorneys have called “arbitrary.”

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein called Grassley’s bullying of Ford on scheduling and procedural issues “an extreme abuse of power,” according to CNN.

“It’s clear that Republicans have learned nothing over the last 27 years. Bullying a survivor of attempted rape in order to confirm a nominee — particularly at a time when she’s receiving death threats — is an extreme abuse of power,” she said.

Among Ford’s requests rejected by Grassley, according to the Associated Press, are that senators, not attorneys, ask her the questions; that she testify after Kavanaugh, not before; that other witnesses be called, including Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge, who she says was in the room when the alleged attack occurred; and that she testify after the FBI has been allowed to conduct an investigation.

Grassley ceded to demands that Ford, whose family has temporarily moved out of their California home due to death threats, be provided security, and that Kavanaugh not be present in the room when she testifies.

Speaking at the right-wing Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC, on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Kavanaugh would be confirmed regardless of the allegations against him that he tried to rape Ford at a party when the two were in high school. His statements revealed that Republicans largely view Ford’s testimony as a temporary delay in the strong-arming of Kavanaugh onto the nation’s highest court for a lifetime appointment.

“In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the U.S. Supreme Court,” McConnell said, according to The Washington Post. “So, my friends, keep the faith. Don’t get rattled by all this. We’re going to plow right through it and do our job.”

Meanwhile, a majority of Yale Law School faculty members, from where Kavanaugh graduated in 1990, sent a letter to the Senate committee urging that the confirmation process in a “fair and deliberate way,” the Post reported.

“Some questions are so fundamental to judicial integrity that the Senate cannot rush past them without undermining the public’s confidence in the Court,” the letter, signed by 47 faculty members, stated. “This is particularly so for an appointment that will yield a deciding vote on women’s rights and myriad other questions of immense consequence in American lives.”

Yale law professor Muneer Ahmad told the Post that, “In my view, it’s an extraordinary statement that this is an extraordinary moment in our country’s history.”