[FONT="]A day after Justice Kavanaugh, as he is now titled, was granted the ninth seat on the nation’s highest court, in the face of fierce protests, Collins was asked by Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union whether she had betrayed women. The Republican senator replied: “This is a case where there was an incident that happened allegedly 36 years ago where there is no corroborating evidence.”
[/FONT][FONT="]She went on: “It is not fair to Brett Kavanaugh for this to be disqualifying in the absence of evidence, but that does not mean that I don’t believe Christine Ford was a victim of sexual assault.”
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Collins then put further space between herself and Ford, the California-based professor who accused Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her at a teenaged gathering in Maryland in the early 1980s. She said that she found Ford’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee “heartwrenching, painful, compelling” but she went on to say: “I believe that she believes what she testified to.”
[/FONT]
[FONT="]But Democratic Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono shot back at Collins’s phrase, asking: “What is that?” on CNN, and calling it insulting to Ford.[/FONT]
[/FONT][FONT="]She went on: “It is not fair to Brett Kavanaugh for this to be disqualifying in the absence of evidence, but that does not mean that I don’t believe Christine Ford was a victim of sexual assault.”
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Collins then put further space between herself and Ford, the California-based professor who accused Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her at a teenaged gathering in Maryland in the early 1980s. She said that she found Ford’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee “heartwrenching, painful, compelling” but she went on to say: “I believe that she believes what she testified to.”
[/FONT]
[FONT="]But Democratic Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono shot back at Collins’s phrase, asking: “What is that?” on CNN, and calling it insulting to Ford.[/FONT]