{"id":97769,"date":"2018-09-26T15:08:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gardner-probe-kavanaugh-allegations\/"},"modified":"2018-09-26T15:08:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T21:08:00","slug":"gardner-probe-kavanaugh-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gardner-probe-kavanaugh-allegations\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardner: Probe Kavanaugh allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner says he supports a Senate committee\u2019s investigation into a Boulder woman\u2019s allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.<\/span>File photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said Monday he \u201cabsolutely supports\u201d a Senate committee\u2019s investigation into a Boulder woman\u2019s allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when the two were college students.<\/p>\n

Deborah Ramirez, 53, told The New Yorker<\/em> magazine that Kavanaugh exposed himself, pushing his penis in her face and causing her to touch it as she pushed him away while at a drunken dormitory party during the 1983-84 academic year, when both were in their firsts undergraduate years at Yale University.<\/p>\n

The news emerged just hours after Senate Judiciary Committee negotiators reached an agreement with Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who has accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at an alcohol-fueled party when they were teenagers, to schedule a hearing on her allegations Thursday.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Gardner, Republican of Colorado, spokesman said the panel\u2019s Republican investigators asked Ramirez\u2019s attorney for more information about her allegations as soon as the New Yorker story posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenator Gardner was first made aware of these allegations when the New Yorker story was published Sunday evening,\u201d Gardner\u2019s press secretary, Casey Contres, wrote in an email Monday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestigators from Chairman Grassley\u2019s staff immediately contacted Ms. Ramirez\u2019s attorney to gather more information about what allegedly occurred. Senator Gardner absolutely supports efforts by the Senate Judiciary Committee to gather more information and investigate these claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardner said last week that Ford \u201cdeserves to be heard\u201d by the committee on her allegations.<\/p>\n

Before any of the sexual-misconduct allegations emerged regarding Kavanaugh, Gardner praised the Supreme Court nominee, saying he would make \u201can incredible Supreme Court justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chairman of the judiciary committee, Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, said the panel would \u201cattempt to evaluate these new claims\u201d but he didn\u2019t respond to a call by the committee\u2019s ranking Democrat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to halt confirmation proceedings until the FBI can investigate the women\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

Gardner\u2019s spokesman didn\u2019t immediately respond to a message asking if the senator wants the FBI to investigate the new claims.<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh denied the latest allegation, just as he denied Ford\u2019s allegations last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis alleged event from 35 years ago did not happen,\u201d Kavanaugh said in a statement distributed by the White House shortly after the Ramirez allegations emerged. \u201cThe people who knew me then know that this did not happen, and have said so. This is a smear, plain and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump launched a vehement attack on the latest revelations Monday morning, calling the accusations unfair and unsubstantiated and charging the accusers had come \u201cout of the woodwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boulder accuses Supreme Court nominee of sexual misconduct<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[24],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97769"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}