“I don’t know enough to create the judgment at this point,” Collins replied.4 But other prominent women were less modest about their grasp of the facts. An article in The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan was headlined, “I Believe Her: When I Was in High School, I Faced My Own Brett Kavanaugh.” Flanagan believed Ford’s accusation because a different boy had tried to rape her when she was in high school.5
Within hours of the publication of Brown’s story in the Post, journalists began speculating that the nomination might be withdrawn. Roll Call, citing concerns for the judge’s young daughters, said, “Kavanaugh might decide to spare his family what inevitably will be a few weeks of scrutiny and discussion about Ford’s charges.” And if he didn’t, the story added, the White House might pull his nomination anyway.6
Reporters were hounding those who had spoken on behalf of Kavanaugh, particularly the women who had known him in high school. Many had to turn off their social media accounts to avoid the deluge of phone calls and emails. But not responding to reporters was treated as a tacit admission that one no longer believed in Kavanaugh’s innocence. The HuffPost tried to ask scores of friends and students who had expressed support for Kavanaugh’s appointment if they still supported him. The “vast majority” did not reply, and the HuffPost acknowledged that it did not know how many had even noticed its request for a comment. Almost all who did reply said they continued to support him. (Such support was becoming costly; nearly a third of the former students who still voiced their support did not want their names published.) Nonetheless, the story’s headline ran, “Brett Kavanaugh’s Supporters Now Far More Reluctant to Speak Up Publicly.”7 In fact, people working on the nomination cited Kavanaugh’s incredible base of support among friends as one of the reasons they were willing to fight for him. Raj Shah had worked on other confirmation battles that had heated up and noticed that some nominees’ friends would back out. But Kavanaugh’s friends and colleagues were unflinching.
One former clerk who wrote and spoke publicly on Kavanaugh’s behalf said she felt she had a moral imperative to do so: “You couldn’t not say anything. What if everyone who knew and cared about him decided that this is just too controversial or too contentious, or I have too much to lose, and didn’t speak up? It would have been a real tragedy.”
Despite the revelations, Grassley pushed for the committee to follow the ordinary procedure for an update to a nominee’s background file, which would have meant staff calls with Ford and Kavanaugh. But by Sunday evening, the ranking member, Senator Feinstein, had rejected the standard procedure, saying, “The FBI should have the time it needs to investigate this new material. Staff calls aren’t the appropriate way to handle this.”8
On Monday morning, the White House team gathered to prepare a response to the allegations. Most assumed that something had happened between Kavanaugh and Ford but that the details were in dispute. This would be their first chance to find out exactly what had happened so they could figure out how to craft a message in response. Their early assumptions evaporated after talking to Kavanaugh.
McGahn had already talked to Kavanaugh on Sunday, but now he joined Annie Donaldson and her husband, Brett Talley, in questioning Kavanaugh, who showed them the calendars. They were astonished that he had preserved that kind of documentation. From the beginning, Kavanaugh had been punctilious about avoiding even a whiff of perjury. He had responded to Kamala Harris’s questions with caution despite her contemptuous accusations of evasion. He had just pulled multiple all-nighters to make sure none of the 1,287 written answers he submitted to the Judiciary Committee was marred by the slightest inaccuracy. After weeks of such lawyerly precision and attention to detail, Kavanaugh’s unequivocal statement that the story was not true made a deep impression on his team. They believed him.
Everyone, including the president, wanted to fight back on every front, including in the media, in the committee, and with a hearing. Nobody considered withdrawing the nomination. They knew they might not win in the midst of a #MeToo media frenzy, but they would go down fighting. President Trump’s eagerness to fight had previously irritated Republican leaders, but now even they were thankful for it. Other Republican presidents might not have shown the same fortitude.
The battle ahead would be ferocious. Normally, the burden of proof is on the accuser, but the