Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said he’s “not going anywhere” in a Fox News interview on Monday night.
Kavanaugh, alongside his wife, Ashley, continued to deny the sexual assault allegations against him in an exclusive interview with Martha MacCallum. In a teaser clip released by Fox News, the judge said he was not going “to let false accusations drive us out of this process.”
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who goes by Christine Blasey professionally, claimed Kavanaugh assaulted her at a party when they were teenagers more than 35 years ago. A second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, told The New Yorker that she believes Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a Yale party.
White House aide Bill Shine has reportedly been handling Kavanaugh’s media strategy as President Donald Trump continues to publicly support his nominee. Shine began working for the White House after being ousted as co-president of Fox News over the network’s handling of its own sexual harassment claims.
“We’re looking for a fair process, where I can be heard and defend my integrity, my lifelong record of promoting dignity and equality for women, starting with the women who knew me when I was 14 years old,” Kavanaugh said in the clip. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Blasey sent a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) detailing her allegations against Kavanaugh in July, asking to remain anonymous for fear of backlash. Information about the 51-year-old psychologist’s letter leaked to the media, and Blasey eventually came forward publicly with her story.
Blasey claims that Kavanaugh pinned her down, groped her and attempted to take off her clothes during a high school party when they were teenagers. She alleges that Kavanaugh was drunk at the time and only stopped after a classmate threw himself on top of them, giving her a chance to run away.
MacCallum didn’t ask Kavanaugh about the person Blasey said had interrupted the alleged assault, Mark Judge. Judge sent a statement to the Senate committee claiming he did not remember the incident and did not wish to speak on the matter publicly.
Kavanaugh told MacCallum he had never been drunk enough to misremember or forget any of his actions. Judge, however, wrote an entire memoir about being blackout drunk in high school. In Judge’s book, Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk, he references a “Bart O’Kavanaugh” who vomited in a car and “passed out on his way back from a party.”
Though her request for an FBI investigation has been denied, Blasey has agreed to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Kavanaugh did not answer MacCallum’s question about whether he wanted an FBI investigation, even after consistently saying he wanted a “fair process” to clear his name.
Ramirez is the second woman to publicly come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. She alleges that he pulled down his pants and thrust his penis in her face at a Yale party during the 1983-84 school year. Ramirez says both she and Kavanaugh were intoxicated at the time and that she isn’t entirely sure of her memories.
The New Yorker, which first published Ramirez’s account Sunday, was not able to independently confirm if Kavanaugh was at the Yale party she described, but interviewed several of Ramirez’s classmates, who recalled hearing about the alleged incident in vague terms.
James Roche, who was Kavanaugh’s roommate at the time of the alleged Yale incident, told The New Yorker that he recalled Kavanaugh to be “frequently, incoherently drunk.” Another former classmate who chose to remain anonymous told The New Yorker he believed Ramirez’s claims and described Kavanaugh as someone who was “relatively shy” who could become “aggressive and even belligerent” when he drank alcohol.
Kavanaugh has denied both women’s allegations against him and will provide his account to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
This story has been updated with additional details from Kavanaugh’s interview and the New Yorker article.