So far, Ford’s testimony is heart-wrenching, harrowing and made more credible by her ability to describe how trauma affects the brain.
Rachel Mitchell, the lawyer for the Republicans, has stuck to fact-finding questions rather than acting as a prosecutor. If she has a bombshell in her pocket, it’s still there waiting.
The senators, meanwhile, have engaged in a fair amount of partisan sniping over process, which makes the GOP decision to have Mitchell ask questions look far wiser than it did just a few hours ago.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump has not spoken with Kavanaugh today, but Vice President Mike Pence did.
Pence talked to Kavanaugh ahead of today’s hearing to reiterate his support for the Supreme Court nominee.
Fox News has had wall-to-wall coverage of Ford’s testimony, featuring a panel of hosts and contributors.
During the first break, Chris Wallace, anchor of “Fox News Sunday,” called Ford’s reading of her prepared statement “extremely emotional, extremely raw and extremely credible.”
Martha MacCallum, anchor of FNC’s “The Story,” said she felt that Republicans cannot feel that the hearing has gone well for them, noting that the format of having a lawyer ask questions in between questions from Democratic senators did not seem to be working.
“You have to believe that the Republican senators right now are asking themselves whether this was a good idea,” MacCallum said.
Chairman Grassley and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., seemed to bicker over a map that Rachel Mitchell had provided to Ford.
After Mitchell asked Ford to refer to a map of the neighborhood where Ford was living at the time she was in high school — her parents’ house — Harris interrupted Mitchell’s questioning to ask Grassley if all members of the committee would have access to the map.
But Grassley, apparently mishearing comments from his chief counsel Mike Davis, responded by saying he’d been advised to not provide them, before quickly correcting himself after he realized he misheard Davis.
Grassley responded in the microphone, asking that people “speak plainly” to him. Harris thought he was talking to her, but Grassley said he was talking to his staff.
Mitchell then said that a large, blown-up version of the map would be put on display for the committee.
Committee staff are also now passing out the map that they asked Ford to reference.
Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed reporting
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin called into question conspiracy theories that Ford confused Kavanaugh and Judge with two other men.
Durbin asks Ford point-blank: “Dr. Ford, with what degree of certainty do you believe Brett Kavanaugh assaulted you?”
Ford: “100 percent.”
Most witnesses would be able to describe either a trauma or explain brain science, not both.
But Ford’s academic study, driven by her experience, is in research psychology, and she designs statistical models to explain human behavior. This part of her testimony adds the credibility of an expert witness to that of a primary witness to the incident she detailed.
Ford taps into her psychology background to explain why she’s so sure it was Kavanaugh that attacked her.
Feinstein asked, “How are you so sure that it was he?”
Ford: “The way that I’m sure I’m talking to you right now, it’s just basic memory functions, and also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain that sort of, as you know, that neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus so that trauma-related experience is locked there so other memories just drift.”
People were caught off guard when Grassley interrupted prosecutor Rachel Mitchell during her questioning of Ford.
Mitchell is representing all the Republican senators during the witness questioning, so she will perform an odd pingpong of five-minute questioning increments with Ford.
The preliminary instructions from Rachel Mitchell, an outside prosecutor who is questioning Ford on behalf of the GOP committee members, are similar to the instructions given to a witness before a deposition (e.g., “don’t guess, but you can estimate”).
Danny Cevallos is an MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst
Rachel Mitchell, an experienced sex crimes prosecutor in Maricopa County, Arizona, whom Republicans hired to serve as nomination investigation counsel and ask questions on their behalf, opens her questioning of Ford with a conciliatory tone.
Mitchell referred to Ford’s remark that she had felt “terrified” during the alleged attack, and then said, “I just wanted to let you know, I’m very sorry.”
“That’s not right,” Mitchell said.
Right in the middle of Christine Blasey Ford’s opening remarks describing her accusations, the Republican National Committee’s official twitter account released a video with a testimonial for Brett Kavanaugh from one of his former law clerks — under the hashtag “#IstandWithBrett.”
Despite the criticism from Republican senators, Ford thanked Feinstein for keeping her identity anonymous in the letter she sent about her allegations.
“In a letter dated August 31 Senator Feinstein wrote that she would not share the letter without my explicit consent and I appreciated this commitment,” she says. “Sexual assault victims should be able to decide for themselves when and whether their private experience is made public.”
Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony has riveted Twitter.
As Ford read her opening statement, Twitter communications manager Nick Pacilio tweeted that all 10 of the top trends were about the hearing.
Among the trending terms: #KavanaughHearings, Grassley, Dr. Ford, Feinstein, Brett and Mark, and #KavanaughFord.
GOP Sens. Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse are listening intently and looked pained at the opening statement of Christine Blasey Ford.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the other hand, looks annoyed. He is looking around often and moving quite often. Sen. John Cornyn is also squirming and leaning back and looking around.
Democratic senators are watching her opening statement intensely.