Hirono: Collins comments about Ford ‘insulting’

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) on Sunday criticized Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for saying that she believes Christine Blasey Ford believes she was assaulted by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying the remarks were “insulting.” 

“To say that she thinks that Dr. Ford thinks that she was assaulted, what is that? Is she mistaken?” Hirono said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

.@maziehirono on @SenatorCollins: “She says that Dr. Ford thinks that she was assaulted, which is even more insulting than saying she gave a very credible account.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/K6MkLPlAlb

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 7, 2018

{mosads}Earlier Sunday on “State of the Union,” Collins said she believed that Ford believes what she testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee was the truth. Ford testified that she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh, saying that she was “100 percent” certain that Kavanaugh assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s.

But Collins also said that she doesn’t think Kavanaugh was the assailant, saying that she thinks Ford was actually assaulted by someone else.

Hirono said Collins’s comments were “insulting.”

“[Collins] said herself said that she’s heard from so many survivors from her state and elsewhere. All of us have been hearing stories and accounts from survivors going back many, many years where they kept all these painful, traumatic accounts to themselves,” Hirono said. 

Hirono also pushed back on Collins’s claim that there was “no corroboration” of Ford’s accusations.

“She had talked about this assault to her husband, to others, before Brett Kavanaugh was ever nominated to the Supreme Court,” she said. “She took a lie detector test. Corroboration was there.”

Hirono added that there was no corroboration of Kavanaugh’s assertion that he didn’t assault Ford.

“The people that the FBI interviewed … all said that they have no recollection. That’s hardly what I would call exoneration,” she said.

Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday as a Supreme Court justice following a 50-48 vote to confirm him, with Collins serving as one of the key swing votes.