U.S. President Cleveland's Hawaiian Policy Was to Give Hawaii Back to the Legitimate Royal Government of Queen Liliuokalani
researched by Amelia Gora (2018)
The following information was found in Robert G. Ingersoll's book on the Gutenberg.org site, info on Ingersoll found at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-G-Ingersoll, and the news article about the event from chroniclingamerica.loc.gov website:
(1) Robert G. Ingersoll's book, and biography:
"
CLEVELAND'S HAWAIIAN POLICY.
Question. Colonel, what do you think about Mr. Cleveland's Hawaiian
policy?
Answer. I think it exceedingly laughable and a little dishonest
—with the further fault that it is wholly unconstitutional. This is
not a one-man Government, and while Liliuokalani may be Queen, Cleveland
is certainly not a king. The worst thing about the whole matter, as it
appears to me, is the bad faith that was shown by Mr. Cleveland—the
double-dealing. He sent Mr. Willis as Minister to the Provisional
Government and by that act admitted the existence, and the rightful
existence, of the Provisional Government of the Sandwich Islands.
When Mr. Willis started he gave him two letters. One was addressed to
Dole, President of the Provisional Government, in which he addressed Dole
as "Great and good friend," and at the close, being a devout Christian, he
asked "God to take care of Dole." This was the first letter. The letter of
one President to another; of one friend to another. The second letter was
addressed to Mr. Willis, in which Mr. Willis was told to upset Dole at the
first opportunity and put the deposed Queen back on her throne. This may
be diplomacy, but it is no kin to honesty.
In my judgment, it is the worst thing connected with the Hawaiian affair.
What must "the great and good" Dole think of our great and good President?
What must other nations think when they read the two letters and mentally
exclaim, "Look upon this and then upon that?" I think Mr. Cleveland has
acted arrogantly, foolishly, and unfairly. I am in favor of obtaining the
Sandwich Islands—of course by fair means. I favor this policy
because I want my country to become a power in the Pacific. All my life I
have wanted this country to own the West Indies, the Bermudas, the Bahamas
and Barbadoes. They are our islands. They belong to this continent, and
for any other nation to take them or claim them was, and is, a piece of
impertinence and impudence.
So I would like to see the Sandwich Islands annexed to the United States.
They are a good way from San Francisco and our Western shore, but they are
nearer to us than they are to any other nation. I think they would be of
great importance. They would tend to increase the Asiatic trade, and they
certainly would be important in case of war. We should have fortifications
on those islands that no naval power could take.
Some objection has been made on the ground that under our system the
people of those islands would have to be represented in Congress. I say
yes, represented by a delegate until the islands become a real part of the
country, and by that time, there would be several hundred thousand
Americans living there, capable of sending over respectable members of
Congress.
Now, I think that Mr. Cleveland has made a very great mistake. First, I
think he was mistaken as to the facts in the Sandwich Islands; second, as
to the Constitution of the United States, and thirdly, as to the powers of
the President of the United States.
Question. In your experience as a lawyer what was the most unique
case in which you were ever engaged?
Answer. The Star Route trial. Every paper in the country, but one,
was against the defence, and that one was a little sheet owned by one of
the defendants. I received a note from a man living in a little town in
Ohio criticizing me for defending the accused. In reply I wrote that I
supposed he was a sensible man and that he, of course, knew what he was
talking about when he said the accused were guilty; that the Government
needed just such men as he, and that he should come to the trial at once
and testify. The man wrote back: "Dear Colonel: I am a ——
fool."
Question. Will the church and the stage ever work together for the
betterment of the world, and what is the province of each?
Answer. The church and stage will never work together. The pulpit
pretends that fiction is fact. The stage pretends that fiction is fact.
The pulpit pretence is dishonest—that of the stage is sincere. The
actor is true to art, and honestly pretends to be what he is not. The
actor is natural, if he is great, and in this naturalness is his truth and
his sincerity. The pulpit is unnatural, and for that reason untrue. The
pulpit is for another world, the stage for this. The stage is good because
it is natural, because it portrays real and actual life; because "it holds
the mirror up to nature." The pulpit is weak because it too often
belittles and demeans this life; because it slanders and calumniates the
natural and is the enemy of joy.
—The Inter-Ocean, Chicago, February 2, 1894. "
Reference: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 8 (of 12)
Dresden Edition--Interviews
Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
Dresden Edition--Interviews
Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
********************
About the Author
"Robert G. Ingersoll, (born Aug. 11, 1833, Dresden, N.Y., U.S.—died July 21, 1899, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.), American politician and orator known as “the great agnostic” who popularized the higher criticism of the Bible, as well as a humanistic philosophy and a scientific rationalism.
Although he had little formal education, Ingersoll was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1854, and he subsequently enjoyed a lucrative law practice in Peoria, Ill., New York City, and Washington, D.C. After service in the American Civil War (1861–65), he became a staunch Republican, serving as Illinois attorney general (1867–69) and as a party spokesman in presidential campaigns. In spite of his outstanding contribution to his political party, his unorthodox religious views deterred Republican administrations from appointing him to the Cabinet or to the diplomatic posts that he desired. Nationally known as a lecturer, Ingersoll was in great demand and received as much as $3,500 for a single evening’s performance, in which with brilliant oratory and wit he sought to expose the orthodox superstitions of the times.
Ingersoll’s principal lectures and speeches, published as Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) and Why I Am Agnostic (1896), are found in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, 12 vol. (1902), edited by Clinton P. Farrell."
Reference: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-G-Ingersoll
(2) from chroniclingamerica:
see also: President Cleveland Gave Hawaii Back to Queen Liliuokalani https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6Gs4av5Se1wN2JkZjMxMzEtMDIyNi00YW…
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6Gs4av5Se1wN2JkZjMxMzEtMDIyNi00YW…
http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-truth-about-our-queen-liliuokalani.html
Summary
The Hawaiian Kingdom/Kingdom of Hawaii/He Mokupuni Pae Aina o Hawaii/ Hawaii Pae Aina/ Hawaii/Hawaiian Islands/Hawaiian archipelago government is the legitimate Royal government as documented by U.S. President Cleveland who gave Hawaii back twice (2x) to Queen Liliuokalani.
Queen Liliuokalani maintained that she was the Queen.
Under stress, duress, usurpation, coercion, intimidation, premeditation, piracy, pillaging, plundering, etc. the contract of abdication prepared by former U.S. American Civil War General and Judge Alfred S. Hartwell, a treasonous person, was part of the conspiracy to dethrone Queen Liliuokalani in 1893. Other co-conspirators were William O. Smith, Lorrin Thurston, Sanford B. Dole, Charles Reed Bishop, et. als. and were guilty based on the case precedence of 1851, HAWAIIAN REPORTS, The King v. Anderson and Russell.
Something stinks and I know it's Not me...……….
aloha.
additional references: http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/2017/11/overview-of-us-president-cleveland-gave.html
http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-truth-about-our-queen-liliuokalani.html
Summary
The Hawaiian Kingdom/Kingdom of Hawaii/He Mokupuni Pae Aina o Hawaii/ Hawaii Pae Aina/ Hawaii/Hawaiian Islands/Hawaiian archipelago government is the legitimate Royal government as documented by U.S. President Cleveland who gave Hawaii back twice (2x) to Queen Liliuokalani.
Queen Liliuokalani maintained that she was the Queen.
Under stress, duress, usurpation, coercion, intimidation, premeditation, piracy, pillaging, plundering, etc. the contract of abdication prepared by former U.S. American Civil War General and Judge Alfred S. Hartwell, a treasonous person, was part of the conspiracy to dethrone Queen Liliuokalani in 1893. Other co-conspirators were William O. Smith, Lorrin Thurston, Sanford B. Dole, Charles Reed Bishop, et. als. and were guilty based on the case precedence of 1851, HAWAIIAN REPORTS, The King v. Anderson and Russell.
Something stinks and I know it's Not me...……….
aloha.
additional references: http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/2017/11/overview-of-us-president-cleveland-gave.html
*****************
facebook:
facebook:
feeling thankful.
http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/…/us-president-clev… - yep folks U.S. President Cleveland recognized the ,legitimate Royal government up to the end of his term in office...……..after he gave Hawaii back twice (2x) to Queen Liliuokalani...…….for the records - a keeper...…..pass far and wide...……. 
********************
facebook:
facebook:
Amelia Gora shared a post.
pass on far and wide...….a keeper for sure...…….ohana, friends, et. als.!
http://iolani-theroyalhawk.blogspot.com/…/us-president-clev… - yep folks U.S. President Cleveland recognized the ,legitimate Royal government up to the end of his term in office...……..after he gave Hawaii back twice (2x) to Queen Liliuokalani...…….for the records - a keeper...…..pass far and wide...…….
"Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.
Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.
While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.
[Republican senators rush to Kavanaugh’s defense after sexual misconduct allegation]
Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.
Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a “rape attempt” in her late teens.
In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions, she recounted being trapped in a room with two drunken boys, one of whom pinned her to a bed, molested her and prevented her from screaming. He said he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh’s last name and voiced concern that Kavanaugh — then a federal judge — might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.
On Sunday, the White House sent The Post a statement Kavanaugh issued last week, when the outlines of Ford’s account became public: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
Through a White House spokesman, Kavanaugh declined to comment further on Ford’s allegation and did not respond to questions about whether he knew her during high school. The White House had no additional comment.
Kavanaugh denies making unwanted sexual advances as an adult
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh denied committing sexual or physical harassment as an adult when asked by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) on Sept. 5. (The Washington Post)
Reached by email Sunday, Judge declined to comment. In an interview Friday with The Weekly Standard, before Ford’s name was known, he denied that any such incident occurred. “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way,” Judge said. He told the New York Times that Kavanaugh was a “brilliant student” who loved sports and was not “into anything crazy or illegal.”
Christine Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a consortium with Stanford University, training graduate students in clinical psychology. Her work has been widely published in academic journals.
She contacted The Post through a tip line in early July, when it had become clear that Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of possible nominees to replace retiring justice Anthony M. Kennedy but before Trump announced his name publicly. A registered Democrat who has made small contributions to political organizations, she contacted her congresswoman, Democrat Anna G. Eshoo, around the same time. In late July, she sent a letter via Eshoo’s office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
In the letter, which was read to The Post, Ford described the incident and said she expected her story to be kept confidential. She signed the letter as Christine Blasey, the name she uses professionally.
Though Ford had contacted The Post, she declined to speak on the record for weeks as she grappled with concerns about what going public would mean for her and her family — and what she said was her duty as a citizen to tell the story.
She engaged Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer known for her work on sexual harassment cases. On the advice of Katz, who said she believed Ford would be attacked as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent in early August. The results, which Katz provided to The Post, concluded that Ford was being truthful when she said a statement summarizing her allegations was accurate.
By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.
Her story leaked anyway. On Wednesday, the Intercept reported that Feinstein had a letter describing an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school and that Feinstein was refusing to share it with her Democratic colleagues.
Feinstein soon released a statement: “I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” she wrote. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”
The FBI redacted Ford’s name and sent the letter to the White House to be included in Kavanaugh’s background file, according to a Judiciary Committee aide. The White House sent it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, making it available to all senators.
As pressure grew, the New York Times reported that the incident involved “possible sexual misconduct.”
By then, Ford had begun to fear she would be exposed. People were clearly learning her identity: A BuzzFeed reporter visited her at her home and tried to speak to her as she was leaving a classroom where she teaches graduate students. Another reporter called her colleagues to ask about her.
On Friday, the New Yorker reported the letter’s contents but did not reveal Ford’s identity. Soon after, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) released a letter from 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh when he attended high school from 1979 to 1983 at Georgetown Prep, an all-boys school in North Bethesda.
“Through the more than 35 years we have known him, Brett has stood out for his friendship, character, and integrity,” the women wrote. “In particular, he has always treated women with decency and respect. That was true when he was in high school, and it has remained true to this day.”
As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being chipped away. Her calculation changed.
“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she said, explaining her decision to come forward. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”
Katz said she believes Feinstein honored Ford’s request to keep her allegation confidential, but “regrettably others did not.”
“Victims must have the right to decide whether to come forward, especially in a political environment that is as ruthless as this one,” Katz said. “She will now face vicious attacks by those who support this nominee.”
After so many years, Ford said, she does not remember some key details of the incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior year at Georgetown Prep.
At the time, Ford said, she knew Kavanaugh and Judge as “friendly acquaintances” in the private-school social circles of suburban Maryland. Her Holton-Arms friends mostly hung out with boys from the Landon School, she said, but for a period of several months socialized regularly with students from Georgetown Prep.
Ford said she does not remember how the gathering came together the night of the incident. She said she often spent time in the summer at the Columbia Country Club pool in Chevy Chase, where in those pre-cellphone days, teenagers learned about gatherings via word of mouth. She also doesn’t recall who owned the house or how she got there.
Ford said she remembers that it was in Montgomery County, not far from the country club, and that no parents were home at the time. Ford named two other teenagers who she said were at the party. Those individuals did not respond to messages on Sunday morning.
She said she recalls a small family room where she and a handful of others drank beer together that night. She said that each person had one beer but that Kavanaugh and Judge had started drinking earlier and were heavily intoxicated.
In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made several references to drinking, claiming membership to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Keg City Club.” He and Judge are pictured together at the beach in a photo in the yearbook.
Judge is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, the Weekly Standard and The Post. He chronicled his recovery from alcoholism in “Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk,” which described his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school, renamed in the book “Loyola Prep.” Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing reference to a “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.”
Through the White House, Kavanaugh did not respond to a question about whether the name was a pseudonym for him.
Ford said that on the night of the party, she left the family room to use the bathroom, which was at the top of a narrow stairway. She doesn’t remember whether Kavanaugh and Judge were behind her or already upstairs, but she remembers being pushed into a bedroom and then onto a bed. Rock-and-roll music was playing with the volume turned up high, she said.
She alleges that Kavanaugh — who played football and basketball at Georgetown Prep — held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication. Judge stood across the room, she said, and both boys were laughing “maniacally.” She said she yelled, hoping that someone downstairs would hear her over the music, and Kavanaugh clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her.
At one point, she said, Judge jumped on top of them, and she tried unsuccessfully to wriggle free. Then Judge jumped on them again, toppling them, and she broke away, she said.
She said she locked herself in the bathroom and listened until she heard the boys “going down the stairs, hitting the walls.” She said that after five or 10 minutes, she unlocked the door and made her way through the living room and outside. She isn’t sure how she got home.
Ford said she has not spoken with Kavanaugh since that night. And 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.
“My biggest fear was, do I look like someone just attacked me?” she said. She said she recalled thinking: “I’m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn’t happen, and he didn’t rape me.”
Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life.
“I think it derailed me substantially for four or five years,” she said. She struggled academically and socially, she said, and was unable to have healthy relationships with men. “I was very ill-equipped to forge those kinds of relationships.”
She also said that in the longer term, it contributed to anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms with which she has struggled.
She married her husband in 2002. Early in their relationship, she told him she had been a victim of physical abuse, he said. A decade later, he learned the details of that alleged abuse when the therapist asked her to tell the story, he said.
He said he expects that some people, upon hearing his wife’s account, will believe that Kavanaugh’s high school behavior has no bearing upon his fitness for the nation’s high court. He disagrees.
“I think you look to judges to be the arbiters of right and wrong,” Russell Ford said. “If they don’t have a moral code of their own to determine right from wrong, then that’s a problem. So I think it’s relevant. Supreme Court nominees should be held to a higher standard.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Christine Blasey Ford’s letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein had been redacted when it went from Feinstein’s office to the FBI. The story has been updated to reflect subsequent information that the FBI did the redacting before sending the letter on to the White House to be included in Kavanaugh’s background file.
Beth Reinhard, Seung Min Kim, Alice Crites and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Emma Brown
Emma Brown is a reporter on the investigative team who joined The Washington Post in 2009. Previously, she wrote obituaries and covered local and national education." - from Ruthann Caudhill
Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.
While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.
[Republican senators rush to Kavanaugh’s defense after sexual misconduct allegation]
Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.
Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a “rape attempt” in her late teens.
In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions, she recounted being trapped in a room with two drunken boys, one of whom pinned her to a bed, molested her and prevented her from screaming. He said he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh’s last name and voiced concern that Kavanaugh — then a federal judge — might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.
On Sunday, the White House sent The Post a statement Kavanaugh issued last week, when the outlines of Ford’s account became public: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
Through a White House spokesman, Kavanaugh declined to comment further on Ford’s allegation and did not respond to questions about whether he knew her during high school. The White House had no additional comment.
Kavanaugh denies making unwanted sexual advances as an adult
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh denied committing sexual or physical harassment as an adult when asked by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) on Sept. 5. (The Washington Post)
Reached by email Sunday, Judge declined to comment. In an interview Friday with The Weekly Standard, before Ford’s name was known, he denied that any such incident occurred. “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way,” Judge said. He told the New York Times that Kavanaugh was a “brilliant student” who loved sports and was not “into anything crazy or illegal.”
Christine Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a consortium with Stanford University, training graduate students in clinical psychology. Her work has been widely published in academic journals.
She contacted The Post through a tip line in early July, when it had become clear that Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of possible nominees to replace retiring justice Anthony M. Kennedy but before Trump announced his name publicly. A registered Democrat who has made small contributions to political organizations, she contacted her congresswoman, Democrat Anna G. Eshoo, around the same time. In late July, she sent a letter via Eshoo’s office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
In the letter, which was read to The Post, Ford described the incident and said she expected her story to be kept confidential. She signed the letter as Christine Blasey, the name she uses professionally.
Though Ford had contacted The Post, she declined to speak on the record for weeks as she grappled with concerns about what going public would mean for her and her family — and what she said was her duty as a citizen to tell the story.
She engaged Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer known for her work on sexual harassment cases. On the advice of Katz, who said she believed Ford would be attacked as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent in early August. The results, which Katz provided to The Post, concluded that Ford was being truthful when she said a statement summarizing her allegations was accurate.
By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.
Her story leaked anyway. On Wednesday, the Intercept reported that Feinstein had a letter describing an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school and that Feinstein was refusing to share it with her Democratic colleagues.
Feinstein soon released a statement: “I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” she wrote. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”
The FBI redacted Ford’s name and sent the letter to the White House to be included in Kavanaugh’s background file, according to a Judiciary Committee aide. The White House sent it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, making it available to all senators.
As pressure grew, the New York Times reported that the incident involved “possible sexual misconduct.”
By then, Ford had begun to fear she would be exposed. People were clearly learning her identity: A BuzzFeed reporter visited her at her home and tried to speak to her as she was leaving a classroom where she teaches graduate students. Another reporter called her colleagues to ask about her.
On Friday, the New Yorker reported the letter’s contents but did not reveal Ford’s identity. Soon after, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) released a letter from 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh when he attended high school from 1979 to 1983 at Georgetown Prep, an all-boys school in North Bethesda.
“Through the more than 35 years we have known him, Brett has stood out for his friendship, character, and integrity,” the women wrote. “In particular, he has always treated women with decency and respect. That was true when he was in high school, and it has remained true to this day.”
As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being chipped away. Her calculation changed.
“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she said, explaining her decision to come forward. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”
Katz said she believes Feinstein honored Ford’s request to keep her allegation confidential, but “regrettably others did not.”
“Victims must have the right to decide whether to come forward, especially in a political environment that is as ruthless as this one,” Katz said. “She will now face vicious attacks by those who support this nominee.”
After so many years, Ford said, she does not remember some key details of the incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior year at Georgetown Prep.
At the time, Ford said, she knew Kavanaugh and Judge as “friendly acquaintances” in the private-school social circles of suburban Maryland. Her Holton-Arms friends mostly hung out with boys from the Landon School, she said, but for a period of several months socialized regularly with students from Georgetown Prep.
Ford said she does not remember how the gathering came together the night of the incident. She said she often spent time in the summer at the Columbia Country Club pool in Chevy Chase, where in those pre-cellphone days, teenagers learned about gatherings via word of mouth. She also doesn’t recall who owned the house or how she got there.
Ford said she remembers that it was in Montgomery County, not far from the country club, and that no parents were home at the time. Ford named two other teenagers who she said were at the party. Those individuals did not respond to messages on Sunday morning.
She said she recalls a small family room where she and a handful of others drank beer together that night. She said that each person had one beer but that Kavanaugh and Judge had started drinking earlier and were heavily intoxicated.
In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made several references to drinking, claiming membership to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Keg City Club.” He and Judge are pictured together at the beach in a photo in the yearbook.
Judge is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, the Weekly Standard and The Post. He chronicled his recovery from alcoholism in “Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk,” which described his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school, renamed in the book “Loyola Prep.” Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing reference to a “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.”
Through the White House, Kavanaugh did not respond to a question about whether the name was a pseudonym for him.
Ford said that on the night of the party, she left the family room to use the bathroom, which was at the top of a narrow stairway. She doesn’t remember whether Kavanaugh and Judge were behind her or already upstairs, but she remembers being pushed into a bedroom and then onto a bed. Rock-and-roll music was playing with the volume turned up high, she said.
She alleges that Kavanaugh — who played football and basketball at Georgetown Prep — held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication. Judge stood across the room, she said, and both boys were laughing “maniacally.” She said she yelled, hoping that someone downstairs would hear her over the music, and Kavanaugh clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her.
At one point, she said, Judge jumped on top of them, and she tried unsuccessfully to wriggle free. Then Judge jumped on them again, toppling them, and she broke away, she said.
She said she locked herself in the bathroom and listened until she heard the boys “going down the stairs, hitting the walls.” She said that after five or 10 minutes, she unlocked the door and made her way through the living room and outside. She isn’t sure how she got home.
Ford said she has not spoken with Kavanaugh since that night. And 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.
“My biggest fear was, do I look like someone just attacked me?” she said. She said she recalled thinking: “I’m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn’t happen, and he didn’t rape me.”
Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life.
“I think it derailed me substantially for four or five years,” she said. She struggled academically and socially, she said, and was unable to have healthy relationships with men. “I was very ill-equipped to forge those kinds of relationships.”
She also said that in the longer term, it contributed to anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms with which she has struggled.
She married her husband in 2002. Early in their relationship, she told him she had been a victim of physical abuse, he said. A decade later, he learned the details of that alleged abuse when the therapist asked her to tell the story, he said.
He said he expects that some people, upon hearing his wife’s account, will believe that Kavanaugh’s high school behavior has no bearing upon his fitness for the nation’s high court. He disagrees.
“I think you look to judges to be the arbiters of right and wrong,” Russell Ford said. “If they don’t have a moral code of their own to determine right from wrong, then that’s a problem. So I think it’s relevant. Supreme Court nominees should be held to a higher standard.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Christine Blasey Ford’s letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein had been redacted when it went from Feinstein’s office to the FBI. The story has been updated to reflect subsequent information that the FBI did the redacting before sending the letter on to the White House to be included in Kavanaugh’s background file.
Beth Reinhard, Seung Min Kim, Alice Crites and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Emma Brown
Emma Brown is a reporter on the investigative team who joined The Washington Post in 2009. Previously, she wrote obituaries and covered local and national education." - from Ruthann Caudhill
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