County Police Won’t Investigate Allegations Against Kavanaugh Unless Complaint Is Filed

Whether statute of limitations would apply would depend upon the type of complaint

via U.S. Court of Appeals

Montgomery County police say that unless a complaint is filed, they will not pursue an investigation into Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted her at a party in Montgomery County in the early 1980s when both were high school students.

“We would only investigate if something has been reported to us,” Officer Rick Goodale, a police spokesman, said Monday. “As of now no one has come forward. We are not going to initiate an investigation.”

Goodale said whether the statute of limitations would apply if a complaint was filed would depend upon the type of crime reported.

According to Maryland state law, there is no statute of limitations for felonies in Maryland. Some assault and sex offenses are considered felonies and there is no limitations on when charges could be filed if those offenses are alleged to have occurred.

Just days before the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, said publicly for the first time that she was the author of a confidential letter sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, this summer, in which she accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her during a house party. At the time, Kavanaugh was a 17-year-old student at Georgetown Preparatory School and Blasey Ford was a 15-year-old student at Holton-Arms School, both single-sex private schools in Bethesda. The New Yorker reported on the letter Friday and The Washington Post published Blasey Ford’s account of the alleged attack Monday.

Kavanaugh has denied that the alleged attack occurred.

According to her account in the Post, Blasey Ford accuses Kavanaugh and Georgetown Prep classmate Mark Judge of leading her into an upstairs bedroom in a Montgomery County house as she was headed to the bathroom. She says a drunken Kavanaugh pinned her down on a bed, groped her and tried to remove her one-piece bathing suit. He then put his hand over her mouth as she tried to scream for help, according to her account in the Post. She says she escaped when Judge tumbled on top of the pair.

In the days since Blasey Ford publicly came forward, 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh during high school issued a letter declaring their support for him, while hundreds of fellow Holton-Arms graduates, including Veep star Julie Louis-Dreyfus, signed a letter in support of Ford.

After mounting pressure from lawmakers, Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, agreed to hold a public hearing Monday. Both Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford have been invited to testify and Kavanaugh has agreed to do so. It’s still uncertain whether Blasey Ford will testify

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that Blasey Ford has not said whether she will testify Monday.