Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court brought the Senate’s contested consideration of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation to an institutional conclusion without settling what had happened decades earlier. The FBI reported no corroboration after a limited inquiry that did not interview Ford or Kavanaugh, while the Senate proceeded with the nomination. The result exposed a sharp divide between the formal outcome and the unanswered questions surrounding the allegation and the process used to consider it.

Background and Unsettled Procedures

Ford’s team had requested an FBI investigation in the hope that impartial law-enforcement officials could examine her account. The FBI declined, saying that it considered Kavanaugh’s background check closed. Republicans on the United States Senate Judiciary Committee maintained that the committee had the authority and expertise to investigate. Ford’s lawyers rejected offers for a private interview and instead negotiated the conditions of a hearing, including its timing, format, and participants. The terms were being worked out as the dispute unfolded, rather than applied under a settled protocol.

The procedural uncertainty drew an explicit comparison with the earlier Clarence Thomas hearings. In an opinion article, Anita Hill warned that the committee had still not established a specific process for evaluating allegations of sexual harassment or assault against a nominee. Her concern gave the negotiations a history: the question was not only how Ford would be heard, but whether the institution had learned from an earlier hearing that Hill believed had affected how employers handled workplace complaints.

Ford’s attorneys, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, pressed for Mark Judge to be subpoenaed. Ford said Judge, Kavanaugh’s high-school friend, had been present during the incident; she also recalled seeing him appear uncomfortable afterward at a neighborhood grocery store. Judge’s memoirs described a heavy-drinking party culture at Georgetown Preparatory School, and Ford’s team believed he might at least help establish the circumstances surrounding the party. The committee declined to accept a witness subpoena as a condition of Ford’s testimony. Instead, it accepted written statements from Judge and P. J. Smyth, another person Ford recalled being there. Judge acknowledged his high-school friendship with Kavanaugh but said he did not remember the party or seeing Kavanaugh behave as Ford had described. Smyth likewise said he did not remember the gathering and had not seen Kavanaugh behave improperly toward women. With these potential witnesses not appearing in person, the dispute was narrowed to competing accounts and judgments of credibility.

The Investigation and the Vote

The FBI inquiry did not resolve that conflict. It interviewed Judge, Smyth, Leland Keyser, and an attorney for one of the witnesses, but not Ford or Kavanaugh. Its finding was that it had uncovered no corroboration of Ford’s allegation; the inquiry also found no corroboration of Deborah Ramirez’s allegation. The distinction mattered: the result described what this particular investigation had found, but the questions about the events decades earlier remained unsettled.

On Friday, October 5, the Senate voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination, with the final vote expected the following day. The date marked the first anniversary of Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s first report on Harvey Weinstein and fell almost exactly two years after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. The overlapping anniversaries placed the confirmation within a wider public reckoning over sexual misconduct, while underscoring how sharply the political consequences of that reckoning remained contested.

After the advancement vote, Megan Twohey found Katz outside her office, speaking by phone with Ford and visibly emotional. The vote had gone as expected, and Ford had done far more than she had originally planned to do; nevertheless, Kavanaugh still appeared headed for a seat on the Court. Katz’s reassurance that Ford had done her part offered personal support at a moment when the Senate’s action made clear that testimony and public scrutiny would not determine the outcome by themselves.

The Final Vote and Public Division

The next day, Katz, Banks, and a junior attorney walked through crowds of protesters and into the Senate building, with Twohey following them. They took seats in the gallery to represent Ford through the final vote, even though their role there might amount simply to being present. Their choice gave the proceedings a quiet counterpoint: while senators debated the nomination, Ford’s lawyers remained in the room on her behalf.

The speeches revealed competing accounts of what the confirmation meant. Republican senators emphasized the risk that innocent men could be unfairly targeted and often portrayed Ford as a pawn in an effort to defeat Kavanaugh rather than attacking her directly. Democrats criticized Kavanaugh and expressed sympathy with his accusers and survivors of sexual assault. When Senator Dick Durbin described Ford’s actions as civic duty and apologized for the treatment she had received, Katz bowed her head, overcome by the moment. The Senate floor thus presented not a shared judgment on the allegation, but opposing interpretations of the accuser, the nominee, and the process.

Protesters carried that conflict into the building and beyond it. Demonstrators displayed signs supporting Ford and survivors, confronted Republican senators, and gathered at Mitch McConnell’s home with beer cans in reference to Kavanaugh’s teenage drinking. During the final vote, protesters in the gallery stood and shouted objections before security removed them. Their presence made the public anger audible inside the institution, but it did not change the Senate’s decision.

Confirmation and Its Aftermath

Donald Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn, watched the proceedings from across the room. After the vote, McConnell held a press conference and presented the opposition as a political benefit, saying the process had energized his party’s base. The confirmation therefore carried a consequence beyond the appointment itself: leaders on the Republican side described the controversy as strengthening their political position, even as Ford’s supporters saw the process as a failure to treat her account fairly.

The book places Kavanaugh’s confirmation alongside other developments that show why it was not a final measure of the #MeToo movement. McDonald’s workers, including Kim Lawson, had recently staged a nationwide walkout over the company’s sexual-harassment policies, described as the country’s first harassment-related strike in a century. The Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to activists Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege for work to end sexual violence. Meanwhile, The New York Times was completing a report about sexual-misconduct concerns involving senior Google executives, including an executive who received a $90 million departure payment after an employee accused him of forced oral sex, an allegation he denied. These events did not reverse the Senate vote, but they show the confirmation unfolding amid continuing disclosures, protests, and workplace challenges. Kavanaugh’s confirmation resolved who would take the Court seat; it did not resolve the allegation or end the broader public contest over how institutions respond to claims of sexual misconduct.