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Readers React: Christine Blasey Ford needs to answer a lot of questions — which is why she should have come forward months ago

Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 6.
Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 6.
(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
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To the editor: UCLA law professor Laura E. Gomez speculates that Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh might not be able to “identify harassment, and possibly assault, or he doesn’t want to. Either way I don’t trust him to protect women’s rights.”

Since she hasn’t actually met or talked with Kavanaugh, what she presented was not a reasoned, objective view of him.

Is it not possible that accuser Christine Blasey Ford was attacked by someone other than Kavanaugh? We need to hear from Ford as to why she is so positive it was him. Why is Gomez so quick to accept Ford’s statement that it was Kavanaugh?

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It’s a shame that Ford did not publicly come forward months ago so she could have been heard in the open.

Donald Prell, Palm Springs

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To the editor: President Trump tweeted that “charges would have been immediately filed” by Ford or “her loving parents” if she had indeed been assaulted by Kavanaugh when they were teenagers.

Trump appears to believe that a teenage girl would know how to file a police report and that she would tell her parents about an attack. Both assumptions are, to put it bluntly, sufficiently stupid that one has to question what motivated his tweet.

Additionally, Trump shows no concern that if the attack did occur, then his nominee has lied and is unfit to be a Supreme Court justice. A person with integrity would want to at least attempt to determine the truth, even if that person employed an attorney who says things like “truth isn’t truth.”

David Michels, Encino

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To the editor: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both pro-choice Republicans, should keep in mind Kavanaugh’s conduct since he was accused of sexual assault.

It speaks volumes that he is pressing for the hearing with Ford to be “as soon as possible.” No matter how many adjectives he uses to declare his innocence, they ring hollow when one considers this behavior.

That Republicans are closing ranks to railroad Ford into a hearing without consultation or guarantees of fair treatment smacks of political manipulation, to which Kavanaugh is not only lending his approval but encouraging. What does this say about him?

The Republicans are so desperate to secure this Supreme Court nomination that they are throwing anyone who gets in their way under the bus and reinforcing the fact that the Supreme Court is no longer above politics. And Kavanaugh, by his words and actions, is complicit in this.

Julia Springer, Santa Barbara

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