Molly Prince on September 17, 2018
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine questioned on Sunday why Democrats waited until after the Senate Judiciary Hearing to introduce the allegations of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
“What is puzzling to me is the Democrats, by not bringing this out earlier, after having had this information for more than six weeks, have managed to cast a cloud of doubt on both the professor and the judge,” Collins told The New York Times. “If they believe Professor Ford, why didn’t they surface this information earlier so that he could be questioned about it?”
Collins was referring to a then-anonymous letter from a woman accusing Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a high school party in the early 1980s. Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University in California, identified herself as the writer on Sunday. She had originally sent the letter in July to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, through her congresswoman’s office.
“And if they didn’t believe her and chose to withhold the information, why did they decide at the 11th hour to release it?” she continued. “It is really not fair to either of them the way it was handled.”
Collins said that she considers the allegation to be serious and that Ford needs to be interviewed in order to get more information. She told CNN that she brought the allegation up with Kavanaugh on Friday during a phone call and he was “very emphatic in his denial.”
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