WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 01: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill February 1, 2011 in Washington, DC. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Collins discussed the release of a report that says that less than one percent of the 4,000-mile U.S.-Canada border is monitored by U.S. border officials. (Image: Getty)
Sen. Susan Collins said in an interview on Saturday that although she believes Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was sexually assaulted in high school, she is convinced newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was not Ford’s attacker.
“I do not believe that Brett Kavanaugh was her assailant,” Collins told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that aired on Sunday. “I do believe that she was assaulted. I don’t know by whom. I’m not certain when.”
Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, was one of three key swing GOP votes to approve Kavanaugh. She announced her decision to approve the judge on Friday, and Kavanaugh was officially confirmed on Saturday.
Ford and Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27 about the allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Ford in 1982 when they were 15 and 17, respectively. An FBI investigation was subsequently launched into Kavanaugh, although many Democrats heavily criticized the inquiry because of the low number of witnesses interviewed and its generally narrow scope.
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After many people pushed the theory that Ford had mistakenly identified her attacker as Kavanaugh, the psychology professor said in her testimony she was “100 percent” certain it was the judge. Collins insisted there was insufficient corroborating evidence for her to oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
“I found Dr. Ford’s testimony to be heart-wrenching, painful, compelling, and I believe that she believes what she testified to,” Collins said on CNN’s State of the Union. “But we also had a case where Judge Kavanaugh came forward and said, ‘I’m 100 percent certain that this did not happen,’ so here you have two people who are each 100 percent certain of what they’re saying under pain of perjury. So then I had to look at the other evidence, and was there corroborating evidence, and that’s why I pushed hard for the FBI to do a supplemental background investigation.”
President Donald Trump praised Collins on Sunday at the White House, saying the Maine lawmaker had delivered an “impassioned, beautiful speech.”
“I thought that Susan was incredible yesterday,” said Trump. “You could see how hard she worked, how hard she was working. She didn’t stop.”
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