US President Donald Trump on Friday questioned the credibility of a California professor who accused his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, contending that if the alleged attack was so bad then she would have reported it to the law enforcement when the incident happened 36 years ago.
Last Sunday, Christine Blasey Ford, the professor, alleged that some 36 years ago she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh and one of his friend. The incident derailed her substantially for four, five years.
Trump's tweet marked a sharp break from the days after the accusation first surfaced, during which he refrained from attacking Ford and said she deserved to be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Judge Kavanaugh, who is Trump's nominee for Supreme Court has denied the allegations. He would be appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. Ford, who is a professor at Palo Alto University, has demanded an FBI investigation before she can appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for testimony.
The allegation of sexual assault has put the entire conformation process of Judge Kavanaugh in turmoil, with the opposition Democratic leaders demanding an FBI investigation into the 36-year-old incident before they can proceed with the motion to confirm judge Kavanaugh.
Trump in a series of tweets on Friday defended his nominee. "The radical left lawyers want the FBI to get involved NOW. Why didn't someone call the FBI 36 years ago?" he asked.
"I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!" Trump said.
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"Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a fine man, with an impeccable reputation, who is under assault by radical left wing politicians who don't want to know the answers, they just want to destroy and delay. Facts don't matter. I go through this with them every single day in DC," asserted the US president.
Appearing on CNN, Trump's close advisor Kellyanne Conway said it's very unusual for a person making an allegation to go second and not first.
"If you're the plaintiff, if you're the complainant in say a criminal proceeding, which of course this is not, nobody's been charged with a crime, then you go first because you lay out your case, you lay out your allegation to which the person you are accusing responds. That's a bedrock principle. So asking for that usual sequence to be reversed itself is very unusual," she said.
Responding to a question, Conway hoped that Ford is not being used by the Democrats because that are who breached her confidentiality from the beginning.
"She asked to remain anonymous and they blew her cover," she said.
Ford told The Washington Post in an interview published online that Kavanaugh drunkenly pinned her to a bed on her back, groped her and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams at a house party in the early 1980s.
Ford said she told no one at the time what had happened to her. She was terrified, she said, that she would be in trouble if her parents realized she had been at a party where teenagers were drinking, and she worried they might figure it out even if she did not tell them.
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