Christine Blasey Ford may have had an encounter similar to the one she described in her claim of sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Ford’s claim, which featured no evidence and was rebutted by all the witnesses she named, was a last-minute disruption to the confirmation process for Kavanaugh. Following a public hearing at which both testified and an FBI investigation into the claim, Kavanaugh was confirmed on Oct. 6 to the nation’s highest court.
A Senate Judiciary Committee report released on Nov. 3 that said there was no evidence to support claims made by Kavanaugh’s accusers, the committee said two men had contacted investigators to describe consensual encounters they had with Ford in the 1980s.
One man told the committee that when he was a 19-year-old college student, he visited Washington over spring break and kissed a girl he believes was Ford.
“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,” the committee report stated.
The man, whose name was redacted, added that the woman initiated the kissing and that he did not force himself on her.
The encounter has several significant similarities to Ford’s alleged encounter with Kavanaugh, including happening in a house near the border with Montgomery County, Maryland. Ford said her encounter happened in a house in that county, though she didn’t remember where exactly it was.
The man’s description of the girl wearing a swimsuit under her clothing matches exactly with Ford’s described story and the stories also share the unique detail of the situation ending when a friend jumped on them.
The other man who contacted the committee told investigators that he made several trips to Washington in the summer of 1982 and during one trip he attended a house party “where he kissed and made out with a woman he met who he believes could have been Dr. Ford.”
The man, whose name was also 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,” committee investigators wrote.
“Other individuals contacted by Committee investigators included … two men who separately and independently had contacted the Committee claiming that they believed they had an encounter with Dr. Ford around the time of the alleged incident,” the committee stated in its summary. “Although each individual described details that in some respects seemed to fit Dr. Ford’s allegations against Justice Kavanaugh, both men described consensual encounters.”
