Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh: ‘I will not be intimidated’

Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh rejected Monday fresh accusations of sexual assault when he was young and said he would not withdraw from consideration for the high court.

“These are smears, pure and simple,” he said in a statement. “I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process.”

He charged the allegations that he assaulted women more than three decades ago were part of an unfounded “last minute character assassination” aimed at forcing him to withdraw.

“The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out,” he said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“There is now a frenzy to come up with something — anything — that will block this process and a vote on my confirmation from occurring.”

The statement came after the New Yorker reported late Sunday on a second woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual abuse.

Deborah Ramirez, 53, says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a party at Yale University around 1983-84, thrusting his genitals in her face and causing her to touch them without her consent, according to The New Yorker.

Her allegation came one week after another woman, California university professor Christine Blasey Ford, accused Kavanaugh of shutting her in a room and trying to pull her clothes off at a high school beer party in suburban Washington around 1982.

Kavanaugh, currently an appeals court judge in Washington, said no witnesses have supported the allegations and called them a “grotesque and obvious character assassination.”

Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford are scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on her allegation on Thursday.

Republicans want to push the nomination ahead toward a vote, while Democrats are calling for the committee to halt the process so a proper investigation can be made into the accusations.

“There is only one way to get to the bottom of these allegations against Judge Kavanaugh and prevent the nation from being thrown into further turmoil: an independent background check investigation by the FBI,” Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat in the Senate, said on Twitter.