Hillary Responds to Kavanaugh Blaming Clintons for Assault Allegations

At the Senate Judiciary Hearing last Thursday, where Christine Blasey Ford calmly recounted horrific details of the night Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her when they were in high school in 1982, Kavanaugh responded with anger, tears, deflection, dissembling, and blame. The man who could wind up on the highest court in the land even peddled conspiracy theories claiming that the accusations of sexual assault (by three women now) were some kind of revenge exacted by and/or on behalf of the Clintons.

At The Atlantic Festival in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughed off the accusation before offering up sobering thoughts about Kavanaugh's possible ascension to the Supreme Court, according to CNN.

"It was just part of the whole of his defensive and unconvincing presentation," Clinton replied after laughing when The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg asked about Kavanaugh's blame-throwing at the Clintons.

"They give us a lot of credit. Thirty-six years ago we started this against him," Clinton joked.

"Back at Yale," Goldberg suggested.

"Even before. In high school, apparently," Clinton replied.

Clinton and Goldberg were referring to Kavanaugh's heated opening remarks at last week's hearing where he called the accusations of sexual assault against him a" calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups."

For his part, Kavanaugh does have a history with the Clintons considering he worked with special counsel Ken Starr in the 1990s on the Whitewater investigation, which led to a lurid investigation into Bill Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky that Kavanaugh helped spearhead. All of that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.

Four women have now accused Kavanaugh of abuse, including Ford, his Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick. One anonymous complaint sent to Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner alleges that Kavanaugh physically assaulted a woman in Washington D.C. in 1998.

Clinton told Goldberg that she believed Ford, an upstanding professor of psychology at Stanford who had no reason to put herself and her reputation on the line.

"You have to ask yourself, why would anybody put themselves through this if they did not believe that they had important information to convey to the Senate?" Clinton said, according to Newsweek. "She basically said that she thought it was her civic duty. I found her willingness to say 'I don't remember that, but I remember this' to be very convincing. And I felt a great swell of pride that she would be willing to put herself out there under these circumstances."

"I want the FBI to conduct as thorough an investigation as they possibly can within whatever restraints are imposed upon them," Clinton said of the current investigation into assault allegations.

Beyond the seriousness of the accusations against him, Clinton thoughtfully lambasted Kavanaugh's incendiary performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee as not befitting a Supreme Court justice.

"For anyone who believes there's such a thing as a judicial temperament and that we want judges, particularly those on our highest court to approach issues, approach plaintiffs and defendants with a sense of fairness, then there's a lot to be concerned about," Clinton said.