no suggestion that such speed was suspicious. Unlike the pro-Kavanaugh letter, it was signed overwhelmingly by people who didn’t actually know the person they were vouching for, but their support was treated as relevant to her credibility nonetheless.20 The Washington Post’s report, under the headline “As Conservatives Attack, Hundreds Sign Letters Supporting Kavanaugh Accuser Christine Blasey Ford,” remarked that one of the letters of support “directly challenges the narratives being thrown at Ford—alleged political bias; the decades-long delay in making the allegations—to impugn her character.”
The media, however, were not even reporting the “challenges to the narrative,” to the exasperation of many of Ford’s contemporaries in Washington. Nor were they reporting the dismay of Holton-Arms alumnae at the school’s public support of Ford. Sara Hayes, an alumna, said she had never “been more disappointed nor felt more detached from a school” she loved, decrying the “rush to judgment” and the “presumption of guilt” that the school was espousing.
The next day, Tuesday, September 18, Ford’s lawyers finally responded to the many attempts by the staff of the Judiciary Committee to schedule an interview and prepare for a hearing. The attorneys complained that Ford had been forced out of her home by violent messages targeting her and her family, that her email had been hacked, and that she had been impersonated online.21 Kavanaugh, of course, was enduring similar problems but cooperated by telephone.
Despite having called for a Senate hearing the day before, Ford’s attorneys angrily denounced Grassley for expecting her “to testify at the same table as Judge Kavanaugh in front of two dozen U.S. Senators on national television to relive this traumatic and harrowing incident.”22 Allowing Republican senators who had approached Ford’s account with skepticism to question her, they suggested, would be an outrage. “[N]o sexual assault survivor should be subjected to such an ordeal,” they declared, as though the allegations should be believed without respectful investigation.23
Democrats continued to demand an FBI investigation despite the lack of federal jurisdiction and Ford’s vagueness about the location and date of the alleged attack. The media joined in the call, raising no questions about the practicality of asking the FBI to investigate an allegation with so few verifiable details. A Democratic state senator in Maryland even asked the governor to have the state police investigate the attack. He declined, but the local police later said they would investigate if Ford filed a complaint.24 She never did.25
In response to condemnations of the Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee for not accepting Ford’s allegations at face value, Grassley said on Wednesday the committee was “doing everything” it could to make Ford feel comfortable, and he offered her four different ways to deliver her testimony: an open session or a closed session, as well as public or private interviews.26 They even offered to send female Senate investigators to California to talk to her. The committee’s efforts met with no response from Ford and her lawyers and were ignored by the media and other senators.
Grassley’s assertion that Republican committee staffers had done everything they could to reach Ford, said Senator Mazie Hirono, was “bulls—t.”27 By that point, the committee had sent nine emails and left two voicemail messages. The same senator would later tell the press, “And I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.”28 But Ford’s refusal to answer the committee finally began to hurt her case. Some conservatives were encouraging the Senate to proceed to a vote if Ford did not show up at the hearing.29 Even ABC News’s Cokie Roberts said Ford needed to stop delaying and testify.30
Kavanaugh’s opponents still felt they held a strong hand. Democratic strategists began planning the campaign that would follow their sinking of the nomination, promising to “turn the midterms into a referendum not just on President Trump but also women’s rights, abortion and the future of the Supreme Court.”31
A HuffPost–YouGov poll showed that only 28 percent of males and 25 percent of females found Ford’s allegations credible and that the allegations had not changed their positions on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.32 But other polls showed a decline in support for Kavanaugh.33 Vanity Fair reported that Ivanka Trump had advised her father to “cut bait” and drop the nomination.34
The media continued to report that Ford’s allegation was bad for Republicans and good for Democrats, but there were reasons to believe that this message was at the very least overhyped. Democrats in high-profile Senate races were keeping