“Mark was urging Brett on, although at times he told Brett to stop,” Ford testified. “A couple of times I made eye contact with Mark and thought he might try to help me, but he did not.”

Reporters have uncovered other details about Judge that line up with elements of Ford’s testimony. One of his former girlfriends, Elizabeth Rasor, told The New Yorker that Judge had “told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman,” an act that, she said, Judge appeared to think was “fully consensual.” Judge also wrote a memoir about his struggles with alcoholism that included a reference to a “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who “puked in someone’s car” and “passed out on his way back from a party.” In her testimony Thursday, Ford recalled seeing Judge, who wrote that he worked at a grocery store as a teen, at the local Safeway not long after the incident.

Further reading: Chuck Grassley’s jarring presence at the Kavanaugh-Ford hearing

Yet Republicans have not forced Judge to testify about what happened. What makes that so strange is that Judge could conceivably exonerate Kavanaugh, providing proof that the assault never happened, or that neither he nor Kavanaugh was present, as Kavanaugh claims. There were, according to Ford, three people in the room—and yet the Senate decided to hear from only two of them. Judge remains in hiding in Delaware, while Ford bares her soul to the world.

The entirety of the Kavanaugh nomination has been a parade of egregious bad faith. People who called for black athletes to be fired for protesting unjustified police killings have suddenly become concerned about due process. Those who supported a candidate who wanted to ban Muslims have warned against painting men with a broad brush. The president who called for five teenagers to be executed for a crime they didn’t commit has decried false accusations. Those who chanted “Lock her up!” for more than two years have rediscovered the principle that people are innocent until proved guilty.

Read Sarada Peri on why Trump might get reelected

But ultimately, the sanction that Kavanaugh faces is not death, imprisonment, or even removal from the bench, but simply not being elevated to the nation’s highest court. Imagine how different the country would be if Kavanaugh’s defenders could extend their empathy for him to the average American who comes in contact with the criminal-justice system.

Perhaps Republicans on the committee simply do not want to know whether Kavanaugh attempted to rape Ford. Less charitably, it’s possible that some find Ford’s testimony credible, and they are afraid that truthful testimony from Judge will bolster her account; they want to make Kavanaugh a Supreme Court justice, with the power to shape the lives of hundreds of millions of women, regardless of whether he is guilty.

Having elevated a man credibly accused of sexual assault to the White House, the Republican Party is attempting to place another on the nation’s highest court. Refusing to even attempt to uncover the truth will not change that.

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