The Current

New Yorker writers respond to the news.

Did Republicans Think Through How the Prosecutor They Brought in for the Kavanaugh-Ford Hearing Would Do Her Job?

Rachel Mitchell, the sex-crimes prosecutor from Arizona whom Republicans on the Judiciary Committee brought in to question Christine Blasey Ford, was just beginning her questioning, using a gentle, deliberate tone, when she was cut off by Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee’s chairman. Mitchell looked briefly confused, but Grassley explained: the rules of the committee stipulated that the senators would get only five minutes each to question the witness, and that those five-minute installments would alternate between Republican and Democratic members. Grassley ceded to Senator Dianne Feinstein, who got her five minutes, before Mitchell got to pick things back up, as if pressing Play on a tape recorder. Republicans brought Mitchell in to avoid the ugly scene of a uniform group of men questioning a woman bringing forward a sexual-assault accusation. But did they give any thought to how she would do her job?