A Senate Judiciary Committee report released Saturday revealed that committee investigators interviewed a man who described a sexual encounter with Christine Blasey Ford that shared similarities to the one she claimed she had with Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh.
According to the report, a man — whose name is redacted — told committee investigators in an interview on September 26, 2018, that when he was a 19-year-old college student, he had visited D.C. over spring break and kissed a girl he believes was Christine Blasey Ford. According to the report:
He said that the kiss happened in the bedroom of a house which was about a 15-to 20 minute walk from the Van Ness Metro, that Dr. Ford was wearing a swimsuit under her clothing, and that the kissing ended when a friend jumped on them as a joke. [Redacted] said that the woman initiated the kissing and that he did not force himself on her.
The man’s description of his encounter with Ford is similar to the one Ford alleged she had with Kavanaugh in three ways.
First, the man said the incident took place in the bedroom of a house that was near the Van Ness Metro station, which is located in Northwest Washington, DC, near the border of Montgomery County, Maryland. Ford claimed the incident with Kavanaugh took place in a bedroom of a house in Montgomery County.
Second, the man said Ford was wearing a swimsuit underneath her clothing, which Ford claimed was also the case in the Kavanaugh incident. Ford’s detail of wearing a one-piece bathing suit was so specific that Bustle recently dedicated a post to it titled, “I Can’t Stop Thinking About Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s One-Piece Swimsuit.”
Third, the man said the kissing between him and Ford ended when a friend jumped on them as a joke. Ford claimed that with Kavanaugh, his friend Mark Judge had jumped on them, allowing her to escape.
Ford first publicly spoke about her allegations against Kavanaugh to the Washington Post on September 16, 2018, including the detail about wearing a one-piece bathing suit underneath her clothing. According to the Post:
Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.
While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.
The report also revealed that another man, whose name is also redacted, said that during that the summer of 1982, he had attended a house party where he “kissed and made out with a woman he met who he believes could have been Dr. Ford. [Redacted] said that based on old photographs of Justice Kavanaugh he has seen on the news, he believes the two of them share a similar appearance.”
The report includes the two men’s summaries but does not comment on whether Ford may have confused or mistaken one of the men’s identities for Kavanaugh.
The report said that the committee conducted interviews with more than 40 individuals with information relating to allegations against Kavanaugh.
“Committee investigators found no witness who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against Justice Kavanaugh,” it said.
The report also revealed the committee has recommended charges against one accuser, Julie Swetnick, her lawyer Michael Avenatti, a man in Rhode Island, and a woman who claimed to have submitted an anonymous letter accusing Kavanaugh of rape, for knowingly providing materially false statements and obstruction of a congressional investigation.
In addition, the committee is investigating whether a friend of Ford and former FBI official Monica McLean, had tried to tamper with witness testimony by trying to persuade another friend of Ford, Leland Keyser, to change her testimony.