The lawyer representing Christine Blasey Ford, who says she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while the two were in high school, has a totally different standard for Democrats who are accused of sexual assault.
Debra Katz has been representing Ford — who has offered no substantive evidence to prove her claim that she was sexually assaulted in the early 80s aside from therapy notes outlining an incident of sexual assault 30 years after the fact. The notes do not name Kavanaugh as an attacker and are inconsistent with her story.
No witness has publicly come forward and testified on her behalf — though one woman claimed to have knowledge of the incident on Twitter, then later deleted her claim and backpedaled her story. Kavanaugh himself has repeatedly denied the incident ever took place and Ford has not accepted the Senate Judiciary Committees offer to testify, publicly or privately, and speak out against the federal judge. Through it all, Katz has stuck by her client — even insisting the FBI conduct an investigation into the matter.
Katz’s dedication to Ford, who has accused a Republican nominee of sexually assaulting her, contrasts starkly with how she’s treated women in the past who have claimed Democrats sexually assaulted them.
In 1998, Katz told The New York Times that Paula Jones — who sued then-President Clinton for sexual harassment during her tenure as an Arkansas state employee — doesn’t have a cause.
“If a woman came to me with a similar fact pattern, that is someone in the company above her propositioned her but only once and she suffered no tangible job detriment,” Katz said. “I would probably tell her that I’m sorry, it’s unfair, but you don’t have a case.”
In a segment on CNN’s “Talkback Live” in 1998, Katz said Jones’s suit was “very, very, very weak.”
“She’s alleged one incident that took place in a hotel room that, by her own testimony, lasted 10 to 12 minutes. She suffered no repercussions in the workplace,” she said, according to CNN transcripts.
In 2017, she dismissed the stories of Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who multiple women claimed sexually harassed them.
‘This is not a Harvey Weinstein situation,’ said Debra Katz, a civil rights lawyer who handles sexual harassment cases. ‘Harvey Weinstein was a serial predator who used his power to put women in very vulnerable situations. He abused that power by sexually assaulting women. That’s not what this is.’
Ms. Katz also drew a distinction between Mr. Franken’s role as a comedian and that of a senator.
‘Context is relevant,’ she said. ‘He did not do this as a member of the U.S. Senate. He did this in his capacity of someone who was still functioning as an entertainer.’
