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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lawyer for the woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, of sexual assault told a Senate panel the professor would be willing to testify next week if it provides “terms that are fair and which ensure her safety,” an email seen on Thursday showed.
Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, has been given a Friday deadline to decide whether to testify at a Judiciary Committee hearing planned for Monday, but Republican lawmakers and Ford remained locked in a high-stakes standoff over whether she will appear.
The email from Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, was provided by a Senate aide. In it, Katz told committee staff members she would like to set up a call later on Thursday to discuss the conditions under which Ford would be prepared to testify next week.
“As you are aware, she has been receiving death threats, which have been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and she and her family have been forced out of their home. She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety,” Katz wrote.
“A hearing on Monday is not possible and the Committee’s insistence that it occur then is arbitrary in any event,” Katz said in the email.
Kavanaugh, the conservative federal appeals court judge nominated by Trump in July for the lifetime job as a Supreme Court justice, also has been invited to testify on Monday.
Ford has said Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982 when both were high school students in Maryland, an allegation Kavanaugh has called “completely false.”
Chuck Grassley, the committee’s Republican chairman, on Wednesday sent a letter to Ford’s lawyers giving her until 10 a.m. on Friday to submit prepared testimony if she intended to show up on Monday.
Ford’s lawyers had said on Tuesday she would testify before the committee only if the FBI first investigated her allegation. The FBI has said it is not investigating, a decision backed by Republicans.
In the new email, Katz said, “Dr. Ford has asked me to let you know that she appreciates the various options you have suggested. Her strong preference continues to be for the Senate Judiciary Committee to allow for a full investigation prior to her testimony.”
update from Ford's legal team still trying to push monday out