Monica Lewinsky praised Christine Blasey Ford for coming forward publicly with her allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after her story was “outed without consent.”
“I am so sorry this woman was outed without consent,” Lewinsky tweeted on Sunday. “I’m sorry for what she endured as a teenager. and thank her for her bravery stepping forward.”
Lewinsky was a 22-year-old White House intern when she became romantically involved with former President Clinton in the 1990s.
She has spoken publicly about the onslaught of attention, criticism and abuse she faced from the tabloids and the media after the affair was revealed.{mosads}
Her comment came after The Washington Post published an interview with Ford — her first public remarks since her allegations against Kavanaugh surfaced anonymously last week.
“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,” the Post wrote. “Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.”
Ford, now a 51-year-old professor at California’s Palo Alto University, detailed an alleged incident between her and Kavanaugh in the 1980s, when the two were high school students.
She says Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed one summer and attempted to remove her clothes.
Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh “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.”
She also said Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth when she attempted to scream for help.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford said. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Kavanaugh called Ford’s claim a “completely false allegation” on Monday and said he would be willing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Kavanaugh worked on Kenneth Starr’s independent counsel investigation into the Whitewater and Lewinsky scandals during the 1990s.
During that time, he helped draft a report that laid out the evidence for potentially impeaching Clinton.
He reportedly sought to ask Clinton explicit questions about his sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
A memo released last month shows Kavanaugh’s proposed questions, which include, “If Monica Lewinsky says that you inserted a cigar into her vagina while you were in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?”
Kavanaugh wrote in a memo that year that he was “strongly opposed” to giving Clinton a “break” during the counsel’s questioning.
The 10-question memo Kavanaugh sent to Starr included the subject line, “Slack for the President?”
“I have tried hard to bend over backwards and to be fair to him and to think of all reasonable defenses to his pattern of behavior,” he writes. “In the end, I am convinced there really are none. The idea of going easy on him at the questioning is thus abhorrent.”
Kavanaugh later wrote that Starr’s investigation would be failing its duty if it “willingly” conspired with Clinton “in an effort to conceal the true nature of his acts.”