protect her children from the ugliness and vulgarity of the protests. (The girls were not impressed by what they heard. Liza mocked one of the chants on the grounds that it didn’t rhyme.)
Before the details of Ford’s allegation came out, the rumors had been so difficult on the family that Kavanaugh had wondered if a seat on the Supreme Court was worth it. Knowing that the story was about to break, Ashley went to stock up on groceries. The press had already been camped out in front of their house, and she knew it was about to get worse. The story broke while she was in the supermarket, and she read it on her phone sitting in the parking lot. It was a relief of sorts finally to have the allegation in front of them. Justice Thomas said the same thing about finding out the specifics of the allegations made against him.
She told the girls what they needed to know, not wanting them to hear it from anyone else, and reassured them that they could ask her and their father anything, and they would be as honest as possible.
Friends hurried to help, offering to bring meals and take care of the girls and making sure everyone was okay. They would take the girls for extended playdates to keep them entertained. One set of friends had taken Liza to the Columbia Country Club for lunch when news about the allegations came on the television in the restaurant. Someone rushed over to turn it off.
Ashley prayed regularly and studied the Bible. After the attacks of 9/11, she had come across a verse in the scriptures about not being afraid. She wrote it on a sticky note and put it on her desk outside the Oval Office where she would see it frequently. It gave her the courage to support President Bush and others who had much more on their minds. Nearly seventeen years later, the day after her husband was nominated, she had come across a passage from Psalm 37: “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.” Now, in very different but no less difficult circumstances, she wrote the verse on a sticky note and placed it on her bulletin board at home where it would give her encouragement.
The Monday after the Ford allegations broke, Ashley was incredibly tired. One of the verses for the day in Jesus Calling, a popular daily devotional, was Psalm 37:5.81 Coming across that familiar verse was profoundly comforting. She felt confident that her husband’s nomination was meant to be because she had prayed so hard that he wouldn’t get it, but the attacks on this good and decent man made no sense. They were hard to take.
Leland Keyser’s announcement that she did not know Kavanaugh was gravely damaging to Ford’s already improbable account. This lifelong friend, a woman who had every incentive to blur the lines, was unable to corroborate the allegation. Hugely relieved, the Kavanaughs expected the story to be big news. When instead it was barely reported, they knew they were in trouble.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Too Big To Fail
“ANOTHER WOMAN?” blared the headline, in all caps and all red for emphasis.1 It was 5:30 on Sunday evening, September 23, and the Drudge Report, which had famously broken the news about President Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky in 1998, teased the idea that an explosive new allegation against Kavanaugh was coming. The story would be told by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, the website said. Because Farrow helped kick off the #MeToo movement by breaking the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal a year before, his name gave the headline an air of credibility.
That evening the story was published.2 Senate Democrats were investigating “a new allegation of sexual misconduct” that had been conveyed to them by an unnamed “civil-rights lawyer.”
A Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s named Deborah Ramirez alleged that during their freshman year, “Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.”
After contacting “several dozen” classmates, the New Yorker was unable to find a witness to corroborate the story. One anonymous classmate said he had heard about the incident from another student at the time: “I’ve known this all along. It’s been on my mind all these years when his name came up. It was a big deal.” He said Kavanaugh was