Plans to hold a high-stakes hearing next week with testimony from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, teetered with uncertainty on Sunday as a Senate panel scrambled to resolve potentially make-or-break details, such as potential witnesses who could corroborate her decades-old sexual assault claim.
Sen Lindsey Graham, a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said lawyers for Ford are contesting two GOP conditions of the proposed 10 am on Thursday hearing — that Ford and Kavanaugh will be the only witnesses and that an independent counsel will ask the questions.
“If they continue to contest those two things, there won’t be a hearing,” Graham said.
“We’re not going to let her determine how many people we call” and on outside counsel. “I hope she comes.”
A final accord could bring a close days of brinkmanship that have roiled Washington ahead of midterm elections and threatened to jeopardise Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court, even as some Republicans say the additional hearings may do little to change their supportfor him.