The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (pictured), is giving Christine Blasey Ford attorney’s until the end Friday to work out terms of next week’s proposed hearing on her allegations against the Supreme Court nominee. | Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images kavanaugh confirmation Senate GOP makes counteroffer to Kavanaugh accuser with Friday deadline Republicans are giving her until the end of the day to work out testimony details.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is giving Christine Blasey Ford attorney’s until the end of the day Friday to work out terms of next week’s proposed hearing on Ford’s allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, according to a Republican senator.

The GOP is offering to hold the hearing on Wednesday after Ford sought Thursday and is meeting some of her requests but not others, the senator said. The senator added that Republicans are not inclined to agree with Ford’s lawyers that she should only be questioned by lawmakers – not an outside counsel.

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“We’ll do it on Wednesday, we expect the accuser before the accused, and we do intend to have the counsel do the questioning,” the senator said, summing up the Republicans’ stance.

The party is assenting to two of the terms Ford’s lawyers laid out in a Thursday evening call with staff from both parties, the senator said: limiting the hearing to one camera and ensuring that Kavanaugh is not in the same room as her.

GOP members of the Judiciary Committee held a conference call on Friday morning to discuss how to respond to the requests from Ford’s lawyers. But several elements of their offer appear to be nonstarters with Democrats and Ford’s camp, which had made clear that she could not be in the capital to testify before Thursday, according to a senior aide to the minority.

“They’re making this disingenuous counter-offer knowing she won’t be here,” the Democratic aide said.

The GOP has been told that Ford does not want to fly from her California home to Washington, according to the Republican senator, which means she may need to drive across the country to make the hearing.

Republicans have discussed using an outside counsel to question Ford, potentially a woman, in order to avoid the potentially painful sight of their 11 male Judiciary Committee members grilling Kavanaugh’s accuser in an echo of the 1991 Anita Hill hearings.

But one Judiciary panel Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, immediately dismissed the prospect that only outside counsel could question Ford at the hearing. “I have a constitutional duty to advise and consent,” he said in a statement. “That means asking questions of a nominee for the Supreme Court who has been credibly accused of sexual assault.”

Barring new revelations at the potential Ford hearing, the party plans to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination in the Judiciary Committee shortly after hearing her testimony next week. And President Donald Trump joined many senior Republicans Friday in launching a heated defense of their Supreme Court nominee.

After a week of holding back, Trump disputed the credibility of Ford's sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh on Twitter on Friday. The comments panicked Republicans who had welcomed Trump's restraint about a scandal that threatens to bring down his Supreme Court nominee, but they haven’t yet definitively soured the GOP’s upper ranks on Kavanaugh.

Yet Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critical undecided swing vote on the nomination, said she was “appalled” by Trump’s response and urged her fellow Republicans to try to “make this as comfortable a process for [Ford] as possible.”

"We should try to accommodate Professor Ford within the realm of reasonableness,” Collins told reporters in her home state. “My advice to the Senate leaders is she has said she could be there on Thursday and that we should offer her Wednesday or Thursday. I don't think it's critical as long as it happens next week."



Trump's speculation about why Ford didn't report her alleged high school-era assault if it “was as bad as she says" comes just hours after a close Kavanaugh ally sought to implicate another classmate of the nominee and Ford in the attack on her — a Kavanaugh exoneration theory hotly anticipated by the GOP that landed with a deafening thud.

The one-two punch of Trump and prominent conservative lawyer Ed Whelan's unsuccessful attempts to undercut Ford and boost Kavanaugh leaves the GOP effort to confirm the 53-year-old appeals court judge in fresh peril. It caps a week of roller-coaster talks over whether his 51-year-old accuser, a California-based professor, will testify publicly.

Trump had steered clear of passing judgment on Ford's allegation all week, giving Judiciary Republicans political space to hear out Ford before pressing ahead, but then previewed his Friday morning line of attack on Thursday night.

"I don't think you can delay it any longer. I think they have delayed it a week already," Trump said of the committee's confirmation process.

Some Republicans said that their party’s hand in talks with Ford’s lawyers was weakened by the president’s broadside, given the lack of compassion it showed toward an alleged victim.

“The issue is that the compassion component is now turned on its head because you have the president filling the airwaves with something that is not compassionate,” said a plugged-in former Republican leadership aide.

That Republican said he was still confident Kavanaugh will be confirmed but admitted it just became more challenging for GOP leaders: “It obviously makes their job more difficult, but I think they are capable of doing it.”

But a Republican close to the confirmation process described Trump's comments as a necessary shift of tone to put the White House back on offense for Kavanaugh: “This is getting ridiculous. The president had to step in."

Trump’s earlier relatively low-key stance toward Ford’s allegations had helped the Senate GOP from facing questions about an often inconsistent president.

I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018

“He’s still been tweeting, but not about that,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas earlier this week. “I think he recognizes this is something the Senate has to work out. It’s not really something that he has that much control over at this point.”

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday sought to calm his party’s nerves amid Trump’s tweets.

"You've watched the fight, you've watched the tactics, but here's what I want to tell you: In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will on the United States Supreme Court," McConnell told conservatives gathered at a summit in Washington. "Keep the faith, don't get rattled by all of this, we're going to plow right through it and do our job."

Trump also took to his favorite social media platform to torch Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for holding onto Ford’s July letter sharing her story “only to release it with a bang after the hearings were OVER - done very purposefully to Obstruct & Resist & Delay. Let her testify, or not, and TAKE THE VOTE!”

Feinstein has defended her decision to keep Ford’s letter from even her fellow Democrats until a media leak forced their hand on a referral to the FBI. She contended that she had no effective avenue to probe the allegation without violating Ford’s request for confidentiality. The FBI has added Ford’s letter to Kavanaugh’s background file but not opened any new investigation, much to Democrats’ frustration.

Adding to the drama, however, was the bid by the judge's friend and influential conservative Whelan to clear Kavanaugh's name. Whelan, president of the right-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center, had heavily forecast new information about Ford's allegation that emerged as a series of tweets trying to blame another man — who supports Kavanaugh — for the alleged assault.

The Senate GOP had been in touch with Whelan about his theory, and though they were unaware of the details there was some excitement that Kavanaugh's name could be cleared this week. Whelan's attempt backfired spectacularly and he sought to apologize for it on Friday.

"I was very surprised to see it happen the way it did. I thought there was like, you know, a plan," said one Republican aide. "The timing and method of dispersing the information was way past underwhelming.”

Republicans had been looking to Whelan as a credible defender of Kavanaugh's, given his central position in defending the president's nominees and advocating for a more conservative court. People working to confirm Kavanaugh said Whelan's credibility is now shot.

Democrats, for their part, see any potential hearing next week as an opportunity to get more details on whether Kavanaugh as well as other Senate Republican offices conferred in advance with Whelan on his misguided exoneration attempt.

But Kavanaugh’s defenders continued to support the nominee. More than 70 women who have known Kavanaugh at various points in his life crowded a stage at the JW Marriott in Washington on Friday, adamantly dismissing the allegations as contradictory to his character.

One of the women, Meghan McCaleb, said she would hang out with Kavanaugh nearly every weekend in high school and that Kavanaugh dated her sister and some of her closest friends. McCaleb said she tangentially knew Ford through mutual friends. Though McCaleb did not say Kavanaugh and Ford were never at a party together, she did say she never remembers being at party with Ford, who was in another social group.

Christopher Cadelago, Ramsen Shamon and Matthew Choi contributed to this report.

