Christine Blasey Ford (center) confers with and her attorneys Debra Katz (left)) and Michael Bromwich, as she testifies on Capitol Hill on Sept. 27. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Ford would have ruled out much-scrutinized Kavanaugh calendar date, her team says

Christine Blasey Ford would have ruled out a key date that both Republicans and Democrats have examined in evaluating her sexual assault claim against Brett Kavanaugh, had the FBI contacted her for its inquiry, according to a member of her team.

The July 1, 1982, entry has come under heightened scrutiny as the Senate considers Ford’s allegation against Kavanaugh, based largely on a gathering on that date that the judge listed in his calendars. For its time-limited inquiry into the claims against Kavanaugh, the FBI has reportedly interviewed attendees of what the judge described in 1982 as a gathering on that night with friend Mark Judge — whom Ford has said was in the room when she was attacked — and another friend whom Ford has said she “went out with” in high school.


Under questioning from GOP outside attorney Rachel Mitchell last week, Kavanaugh said that any event like the one at which Ford said she was assaulted would appear on his calendar “because I documented everything of those kinds of events, even small get-togethers.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) later seized on the July 1 entry in Kavanaugh’s calendar as potentially “powerful corroborating evidence.”

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But a member of Ford’s team said the California-based professor — who was not interviewed by the FBI for its inquiry — “would have told them that she never considered July 1 as a possible date, because of some of the people listed on his calendar who she knew well and would have remembered.”

“She would have also told the FBI that it was just a regular summer night for everyone else who was there,” the member of Ford’s team added. “There would have been no reason for them to remember it.”

It’s unclear how much the FBI scrutinized July 1, 1982, during its interviews with what senators said Thursday were nine individuals connected to sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh from Ford and Deborah Ramirez, a college classmate who alleges he exposed himself to her at a party.

But Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters Thursday that the bureau’s inquiry was “pretty specific. They really tried to find out as much as they could, matching up dates and places — kind of what had been alleged.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.