High school friend of Kavanaugh reacts to new allegation; Alan Dershowitz on Kavanaugh chaos

Name: Tucker: New Kavanaugh accusation raises questions
Uploaded: 2018-09-26T21:39:59-04:00
Duration: 7 min 56 s
Description: Where are the witnesses to these alleged crimes?

Video

Tucker: New Kavanaugh accusation raises questions

Where are the witnesses to these alleged crimes?

This is a rush transcript from "Tucker Carlson Tonight," September 26, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST: Good evening and welcome to "Tucker Carlson Tonight." The president held his first news conference in over a year this afternoon. He took questions for an hour and 21 minutes and 44 seconds, because we were counting.

It was mostly about Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination. In case you missed it, here's part of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They've destroyed a man's reputation and they want to destroy it even more. And I think people are going to see that in the midterms, what they've done to this family, what they've done to these children, these beautiful children of his, and what they've done to his wife.

And they know it's a big fat con job, and they go into a room, and I guarantee you they laugh like hell. 36 years, there's no charge. All of a sudden, the hearings are over and the rumors start coming out. And then you have this other con artist Avenatti come out with another beauty today. Look, these are very dishonest people, these are con artists, and the press knows it, but the press doesn't write it.

I could pick another Supreme Court judge - justice, I could pick another one, another one, another one, this could go on forever. Somebody could come and say 30 years ago, 25 years ago, ten years ago, five years ago he did a horrible thing to me. This is just a game that they're playing. It's a con game, it's at the highest level. We're talking about the United States Supreme Court.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We are going to continue to cover this story all night tonight and obviously throughout the weekend into next. There are many strains of it now. One thing we learned today for certain though, Democrats badly want to control the Supreme Court. It's all that matters to them at the moment and they will do whatever it takes, and they are.

The latest exhibit comes from the lawyer for pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, whom as you have heard by now, has a new client tonight. Her name is Julie Swetnick and she alleges that about 35 years ago, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was part of a group of teenage boys in the Washington DC area, who committed a series of gang rapes.

Kavanaugh himself seemed bewildered today when he was asked about this claim. He described it as like being part of an episode of "The Twilight Zone." Many observers felt the same about it. In the coming days, we'll have time to carefully assess all of these claims, of the many counterclaims in this story, and of course we'll bring all of that to you.

But tonight, we're going to start with some questions and several come to mind. Here's the most obvious one. What exactly is the allegation here in this new claim? Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut did not hesitate to give his assessment of what it is. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, D-CONN.: What we have now for the first time is a sworn affidavit that specifically identifies Brett Kavanaugh as seemingly raping a woman who has been drugged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Seemingly raped says Senator Blumenthal. What does that mean? It's important to ask because everything turns on that question. Is Swetnick claiming that Brett Kavanaugh raped her? Is she saying someone else raped her? If so, who exactly is this person and where is this person today? Did Brett Kavanaugh commit rape?

None of that is clear from Swetnick's account, which is far more suggesting than it does stating. Read it yourself and see. Now Swetnick does claim that she herself was raped by a number of boys. Was Brett Kavanaugh among them, we don't know, which itself raises more basic question, why doesn't Swetnick's sworn and written statements spell out clearly what she claims Brett Kavanaugh did?

What is clear is that, according to Julie Swetnick, horrible things happened at a series of parties in suburban Maryland in the 1980s. We're not talking drunken high school naughtiness, these are war crimes level atrocities, the kinds of crimes the UN investigates in third world countries. Groups of young women drugged and gang-raped, it's horrifying.

So why hasn't anyone taken all of this to law enforcement? Swetnick's lawyer sent her claims to the media, as he always does. Did he contact Maryland police first? They're the ones with jurisdiction here; are they investigating this? Is this the first time they have seen these allegations?

And if it is the first time, how can that be? Swetnick describes attending at least 10 parties at which public drugging and raping took place. Boys were lined up in a queue to commit rape, she claims, in full view of everyone. Did any of the many people at these rape scenes mention these crimes to anyone, to police, to their parents or their friends then or in the years since?

Washington is a very small place, you may have noticed that, if you've been following the coverage of the Kavanaugh story. Among the permanent population here, everyone knows everyone or knows someone who does. So where are the witnesses to this, where are the people who would have spoken to witnesses about it over the past 35 years?

Did Swetnick herself tell anyone over that time? Kavanaugh's attorney Beth Wilkinson raised these questions today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETH WILKINSON, BRETT KAVANAUGH'S ATTORNEY: I've had people call me and email me saying they know him, they were at the parties, they've never met her, they've never seen her, and they've never heard of any of these allegations.

I've got to believe that if this was happening over two years, with all these women and all these men, someone else would have heard about it and would have reported it by now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Fair questions. What's the answer? And by the way, what was Julie Swetnick doing at these parties? Swetnick apparently graduated from high school in 1980. That means she would have been in college at the time they took place and yet she went to parties with high school kids.

At these parties, she saw horrific gang rapes, but she kept attending the parties, many of them until she herself was gang-raped, and yet she never reported any of that to police would be interesting to know why.

Maybe the most baffling of all though, how did the FBI miss the fact that Brett Kavanaugh was part of a prolific teenage rape ring? Kavanaugh has been personally investigated by the FBI six separate times as part of federal background checks. As staff secretary in the Bush White House, Kavanaugh had the highest possible security clearance, one that allowed him access to this country's nuclear codes.

FBI agents would have spoken to a huge variety of people who knew or knew of Kavanaugh during his high school years, and not one of them mentioned he was a serial rapist who committed his rapes in crowded rooms full of classmates.

How did that happen? And if it did happen, we know that FBI investigators are criminally incompetent, so incompetent they missed a glaring fact like that, so why would we want them to reinvestigate Brett Kavanaugh a seventh time?

Normal people might wonder about all of this, not the media. How dare you ask, they scold questions are forbidden here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANIE LEIGH RUHLE, MSNBC: When you hear Lindsey Graham, a sitting Senator say things like, I find it curious these charges were never brought forward until 2018, come on.

KATE SNOW, NBC NEWS: And it's more than that, he said I hope people will be highly suspicious of the allegation because why would she go to ten parties, why would any reasonable person, I'm quoting, "continue to hang around people like this?" If you talk to people in the world of - the people that advocate for victims and survivors of sexual violence and sexual assault, they call this victim blaming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: They call this victim blaming. Of course that depends upon who you think the victim is. Dumb people on television have already made up their minds about that obviously and they'd like you to shut up.

But there's no reason you should. You're an American citizen, this is your country, it is your Supreme Court, it is your justice system. This process does not belong to cable news anchors or creepy porn lawyers or even to U.S. senators who have decided to give up on due process and instead would like to rule by accusation and screaming.

No, it belongs to you too and you have a right to ask whatever questions you want and to expect adult answers, and you should.

Well tonight breaking as well, the Senate Judiciary Committee has released new transcripts of two interviews with Brett Kavanaugh about the allegations against him. Mollie Hemingway is the senior editor at The Federalist and she joins us to discuss all of this.

So Mollie, first to the claims brought by Stormy Daniels' lawyer earlier today. How do you assess them, what questions come immediately to mind when you read them, and what effect do you think they will have on this process?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST: So this woman is alleging that, while she was an adult, she attended parties that were hosted by children, where other children were raped by the minors in attendance.

She asserts by her own claim that she attended ten of these parties that she witnessed these gang rapes and that she continued to go to them, doing nothing while she was an adult, and these children were engaged in this behavior.

I find it a little difficult to believe that story on its face. As you know, many people in the media are taking it very seriously. They think it's very real that Judge Kavanaugh was the leader of a child gang rape cartel that somehow managed to not be discovered until four days before he was about to be confirmed on the Supreme Court.

That is something I think most journalists should be a little more skeptical of, they should have natural skepticism. They rightly pointed out that it was wrong to engage in a conspiracy theory, about Pizzagate and child rape then, they condemned people for believing that.

And yet, here they are critically receiving and promulgating this information that I think most reasonable people would say is a little difficult to buy.

CARLSON: Do you think, since you live in this area, do you think that it is plausible that if you had gang-rapes taking place in public in a crowded room, not just one but ten of them, serial gang rapes that nobody could be located to corroborate that this happened?

HEMINGWAY: If there were ten gang rape parties where gang rapes occurred, I would imagine there would be many witnesses and much evidence to support this claim. And in fact, it would be shocking that it hadn't come out already.

Find it personally shocking that any woman would see a child being gang- raped and not do something about that, much less that she would continue to go to parties where this happened. It's a very difficult thing for me to believe, although maybe she has evidence to support this - those questions, so yes.

CARLSON: Raising those questions, I will remind you, is victim blaming. So you should be ashamed.

HEMINGWAY: It's worth noting too that the first allegation that came out actually seemed like it could at least be a possibility.

CARLSON: Yes.

HEMINGWAY: But each subsequent allegation is getting more and more ridiculous, and that makes it actually seem like the entire thing is part of a sort of coordinated effort, rather than a serious problem that serious people should be taking seriously.

CARLSON: Very quickly, and I hate to put you on the spot, do you think that the nomination process will go forward or will this successfully do what it's intended to do, which is stop it?

HEMINGWAY: Totally apart from the politics of it, it's very important for the country that we not make this the standard by which we allow things to happen. It is very important that people not be able to be bullied out of a nomination by outlandish claims and that it is just so crucial that we believe that people are innocent until proven guilty.

To say that these claims don't come close to meeting the standard of guilt is a huge understatement. And so, I think it's actually important for everybody to not let bullies control the process, to understand that people do have a right to have a fair and normal and sane nomination battle, and what we're seeing right now is none of those things.

CARLSON: No it's not.

Mollie, thank you very much for that.

HEMINGWAY: Thank you.

CARLSON: We're barely half a day from the testimony of Christine Ford before the United States Senate. What can we expect when we see that, we'll talk to someone who is very close to the woman who'll be doing the questioning tomorrow of Ford.

Plus, Alan Dershowitz, one of the most trusted legal voices in this country, a man committed to fairness even when it cuts against his own position, will tell us what we should expect tomorrow for those hearings, what might restore faith in due process and our system.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have George Washington, the Democrats would vote against him, just so you understand. And he may have had a bad past, who knows.

(LAUGHTER)

He may have had some I think accusations made, didn't he have a couple of things in his past. George Washington would be voted against 100% by Schumer and the con artists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: If Christine Ford appears before the Senate tomorrow, as expected, she won't simply be speaking to members of the Judiciary Committee. She will also speak with Arizona's sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, who's been tapped to ask questions as an outside counsel.

What sort of person is Rachel Mitchell, what does she do, and what sort of prosecutor has she been? Bill Montgomery will know the answer. He's a Maricopa County Attorney and he is Rachel Mitchell's boss. He joins us tonight.

Thanks very much for coming on, appreciate it

BILL MONTGOMERY, COUNTY ATTORNEY FOR MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA: You're very welcome, Tucker.

CARLSON: So just to clarify something, The Washington Post, one of its columnists sent out a Tweet today saying of Republicans in Congress describing as "clueless old white guys pick someone from Sheriff Joe Arpaio's operation." Is she from Sheriff Joe Arpaio's operation?

MONTGOMERY: No Tucker, she's not. She's a Deputy County Attorney, which means she works for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Sheriff's deputies and detention officers work for sheriffs.

CARLSON: Thanks for clarifying that. What will she be doing tomorrow if Christine Ford attends this hearing?

MONTGOMERY: Well, if that hearing does go forward, my understanding is that she will assist the Judiciary Committee in trying to obtain information and get to the ground truth of whatever allegations have been made, and cover the scope of those during the hearing.

Exactly how she's going to do that, I've left her alone, as I do with my prosecutors when they're about ready to go into trial, and she'll be developing that line of questioning based upon her training, background, and experience, and whatever specific guidance she might get from the Committee on areas of inquiry they really want her to cover.

CARLSON: So what's her posture, what are her assumptions going into this? When she speaks to someone who has alleged a crime, a felony against somebody else, who says she's a victim, is the assumption from the prosecutor that she's telling the truth, that she's not, or is it neutral?

MONTGOMERY: Well, it's neutral. What Rachel will do is go in and start by listening and listen to what the allegations are, listen to what people are saying. Now, she certainly has a victim-centered focus as a prosecutor, but that doesn't mean you can accept as ground truth everything that's said.

It's really important for prosecutors, and something she's been doing for about 25 years, to listen to all the facts, assess what can be proven, what can be corroborated, what needs corroboration, and then conduct an overall review of the information that she's got in order to make a decision.

Now, ordinarily for us as prosecutors, that decision is whether or not we should charge somebody with a crime, seek an indictment and prosecute. That's not the scenario we have here. But that basic approach to getting information and trying to assess credibility and what type of corroboration there might be, that skill set is equally applicable.

CARLSON: I've noticed watching this story unfold that almost everybody on the periphery of it has been sucked in and damaged. Brett Kavanaugh's childhood friend Mark Judge, most people never heard of him, is now the center of very intense criticism from the Left just because he's been named; he hasn't said anything.

Do you think she's ready for that? I mean she could see her own character assassinated if she asked questions that Democrats don't like.

MONTGOMERY: Well unfortunately, Tucker, that's not new for prosecutors, so we get accused of things every single day. Back here in her home jurisdiction, those who have litigated against Rachel, those who've worked with her, worked for her, or who've had the privilege of supervising her know what her reputation is, and it's based upon her performance, her actions and how she treats other people.

And nothing that happens in the hearing tomorrow will be able to affect that. She'll be able to come back to her job - hope she comes back to her job. She'll be able to come back to her job and pick up where she left off, and she's very well grounded, professional, fair and objective.

And once she's done with this, she'll be able to leave it behind. That was a task that she was called upon to do, she'll perform it, and then it'll be done. And just like prosecutors have to move from one case to the next, and particularly in this area where her background is in sex crimes--

CARLSON: Right.

MONTGOMERY: --you've got to be able to deal with the case, work with the victim, seek justice from the accused, and then go to your next case.

CARLSON: Yes, seek justice, that's the--

MONTGOMERY: Right.

CARLSON: No one's seeking justice right now, so I'll be glad to see her as the only person doing that tomorrow. Thank you very much. You made us all feel better hearing that.

MONTGOMERY: You're very welcome, Tucker, thank you.

CARLSON: Thanks.

So both Ford and Kavanaugh will be asked questions tomorrow in the Senate. What should those questions be? Joining us tonight is Francey Hakes. She's a former DoJ National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction.

Francey, if you were crafting the questions to these two people whose stories do not match one another, what would those questions be?

FRANCEY HAKES, FORMER DOJ NATIONAL COORDINATOR FOR CHILD EXPLOITATION PREVENTION AND INTERDICTION: Well Tucker, first you have to challenge each account. You challenge Kavanaugh's denial, just like you challenge Dr. Ford's account. That's what a good prosecutor does.

Your previous guest hit the nail right on the head. Prosecutors review cases and prepare for trial with an eye toward justice, not a conviction, but justice. And here you've got an account that has some credibility issues and so I expect this prosecutor, this seasoned prosecutor, to go over Dr. Ford's memory to talk to her about other events that were happening in her life at the time, to test her memory, to ask her about the circumstances of her first disclosure to the therapist, the circumstances of the letter that she's written, and the inaccuracies in some of her accounts, or at least they are internally inaccurate, right.

At one point she says it's her and four boys. At one point she says two boys were in the room and another it's four boys and for two girls, then it's four boys and one girl. All of these inconsistencies will be challenged by the prosecutor.

CARLSON: Do you think having worked on criminal cases at DoJ that it's legitimate for lawmakers or justice officials to come in a case with assumptions based on immutable characteristics?

In other words, there is a man and there is a woman, we know that women tell the truth more than men, men often lie or vice versa.

What happens to justice when you approach a case on those terms?

HAKES: Well, it's not justice, Tucker, and I've taken a lot of heat on social media for saying that this #IBelieveHer is absolutely moronic. That is not justice.

Two hundred years or jurisprudence argue against believing a bare accusation. And people say, "Oh it's not a criminal trial, it's a job interview."

I don't care what it is, you're calling someone a sex offender and a rapist. He has absolutely every right to have those allegations challenged, tested, and even questioned, and that's not victim blaming, it's simply seeking justice.

CARLSON: What you said used to be obvious, I don't think I ever met anyone who would disagree with that. Now it seems half the country thinks what you're saying is microaggression, if not a macro aggression. Where does that leave us? Can you get justice in a place where people assume that your immutable characteristics determine your behavior?

HAKES: No, Tucker, this is so appalling to me, you might as well fire every prosecutor, every police officer and every defense attorney in this country, if we're going to proceed on the assumption that people are guilty merely because of a bare allegation.

Just go ahead and take - keep everyone in prison who's there and let everyone just start writing in letter accusations and make an allegation and someone goes to prison. That is not this country, it's not the country I grew up in, it's not the country I was a prosecutor in for many years, and it's not the country I want to be in.

CARLSON: No, it's not the one I want to live in either or I don't think any of us do. Francey, thank you very much for that perspective.

HAKES: Thank you.

CARLSON: Despite what you just heard, many in Washington are calling the presumption of innocence an impediment to justice, rather than a critical part of it. We'll ask one Democrat if that's really the world we want to live. Plus, Alan Dershowitz joins us to weigh in on the Kavanaugh story in some detail. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, more and more Democratic lawmakers are saying in public, something most of us never thought we'd hear, due process is ridiculous, let's get rid of it. Accused of doing something bad decades ago, it is now your job to prove you didn't do it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-N.Y.: There's no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.

JACOB TAPPER, CNN: Doesn't Kavanaugh have the same presumption of innocence as anyone else in America?

SEN. MAZIE HIRONO, D-HAWAII: I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, D-CONN.: We have a constitutional duty to get to the bottom of these allegations. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has a responsibility to come forward with evidence to rebut them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kavanaugh, who is seeking a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and who I think now bears the burden of disproving these allegations, rather than Dr. Ford and Miss Ramirez.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Richard Goodstein has thought a lot about due process. He advised both Bill and Hillary Clinton's campaigns. He joins us next.

Richard, we're just talking at the break, can you think of any period in American history where the presumption of innocence and due process were suspended in cases where people were accused of sexual misconduct and they were punished?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CONSULTANT: So I don't think presumption of innocence really plays a role. I think--

CARLSON: OK, has that ever happened in American history, was there ever a time where we like right now started saying, he was accused of it, he must be guilty, of course he's guilty?

GOODSTEIN: Well again, I think you are kind of characterizing something that these Democratic Senators were not saying. This is not a jury, we don't have a presumption of innocence, this is not a criminal proceeding where you have a - you have to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt, right.

This is - your last guest said derisively it's not a job interview. Well, it kind of is. If any one of these Senators was hiring a Chief Counsel and it came up that all these allegations were out there, I don't think they would just plunge ahead.

What is the rush anyway? They wouldn't plunge ahead and hire them until they were resolved.

CARLSON: I don't think you know that. You know what you might do actually is make someone undergo six separate personal FBI investigations sufficient to give him access to the nuclear codes. Oh wait, they did that with Brett Kavanaugh.

GOODSTEIN: Yes.

CARLSON: And I'm wondering if he was part of a teenage rape ring in Maryland that scores - dozens at least if people witnessed firsthand, that wouldn't have come up, do you think, at any of those investigations?

GOODSTEIN: I think that's a red herring.

CARLSON: Why?

GOODSTEIN: Because the fact is, years ago, somebody would have said Bill Cosby was a pillar of the community, and then it (ph) until one woman came out and then somebody else said, oh that happened to me too.

CARLSON: Yes.

GOODSTEIN: And then it was 60. Do I think that's true for Brett Kavanaugh, no.? But the point is, if the FBI had done an investigation of Bill Cosby, they wouldn't have found that either.

CARLSON: But what's being alleged is very different from what Bill Cosby was just convicted and sentenced for. The allegation now is that Brett Kavanaugh participated in public rape that there - he stood in line in a queue of boys waiting to rape a woman in the middle of a party among his peers in a very small and tightly knit community right here in Washington.

GOODSTEIN: Right.

CARLSON: So is it really plausible, and he did this not once but ten times. So is that - I mean I honestly like just be real with me, does that make sense to you?

GOODSTEIN: The answer to that is bring her in, have her testify in public. Look, every-- CARLSON: But I'm not comfortable with that. I mean does that amazingly--

GOODSTEIN: I'll tell you what - what makes me uncomfortable is that the FBI is not being brought in to investigate this. That was true with Dr. Ford's allegations and all these others. Look, all these questions are about something that came--

CARLSON: May I ask an obvious question - I mean, there are so many obvious questions tonight, but this has been going on for a month, his confirmation. It's the night before the hearing, right before the vote, why any time in the last 35 years did she not report this, these multiple rapes that talks about.

GOODSTEIN: For the same reason that the Cosby victims didn't go public, until they saw oh it wasn't just them. I mean who knows how to account for this.

CARLSON: Do you think this sounds plausible?

GOODSTEIN: I'm saying the answer is bring her in and have her--

CARLSON: You sound so ridiculous; don't you know that.

GOODSTEIN: I'm saying--

CARLSON: Yes, you do, I can tell you do.

GOODSTEIN: No, I'm saying the answer is evidence, put somebody under oath and have them testify.

CARLSON: We've already - hold on--

GOODSTEIN: Each of these women - can I say (ph) one things.

CARLSON: She's already written this under oath.

GOODSTEIN: Each of these women is asking for the FBI under penalty of perjury and criminal prosecution to them to investigate. Nobody's asking the FBI--

CARLSON: Well hold on, since this is just a job interview, let me just ask you one more time, and we have to go. Does this account which you have read makes sense, that this woman attended nine separate gang rape parties, went to the tenth, was raped herself and stopped going.

Brett Kavanaugh was there at these gang rape parties and nobody mentioned it to anybody in the ensuing 35 years. Does that make sense - I mean, does that raise any flags for you at all?

GOODSTEIN: What makes sense to me is that if - I bet you a week from now, I bet you however much that somebody comes forward and says it's - and that's Kavanaugh's problem, that once this starts coming out like with Cosby, if there are others out there--

CARLSON: If you have--

GOODSTEIN: --he's going to be on the bench and it's going to be one and another and it's like really, what is the rush?

CARLSON: OK, what is the rush, it's been 35 years and if you have ten gang rapes in the middle of a small community like Chevy Chase, Maryland --

GOODSTEIN: Why not investigate it? It would take the FBI three days.

CARLSON: Investigate it? Why, if he's a serial rapist, was he allowed to walk free for 35 years, what's the obligation to the rest of us? I'm not victim-blaming, I'm asking a sincere question.

GOODSTEIN: Let's get the facts out, let's get the facts out.

CARLSON: The facts are out so. Anyway, Richard, thank you very much.

GOODSTEIN: My pleasure.

CARLSON: Kirsten Gillibrand doesn't just oppose the presumption of innocence, she says its supporters are evil. Mark Steyn joins us next to discuss that. Plus, Alan Dershowitz here to explain how tomorrow's hearings with Judge Kavanaugh and Christine Ford ought to go. Stay tuned for that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, President Trump had a bizarre exchange with Jim Acosta of CNN today. Acosta suggested the President had a duty of some kind to take a question about Judge Kavanaugh from a female reporter, just as soon as Jim Acosta got to ask a question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN: If you don't mind, after I'm finished, if (inaudible), Hallie, or Vivian, or one of our female colleagues could go after me, that would be great.

Mr. President, just to follow-up on these allegations against Brett Kavanaugh --

TRUMP: What -- what does he mean by that? Explain. What -- what does -- what does that mean?

ACOSTA: I think it would be -- I think it would be great if a -- if a female reporter got --

TRUMP: What does it mean? No, what does it mean?

ACOSTA: I think it'd be great if a female reporter would ask you a question about the - this issue. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to pass--

TRUMP: I wouldn't mind that at all, no. Wouldn't mind it at all.

ACOSTA: All right. Well, let me -- if I can --

TRUMP: Wouldn't make any difference to me.

ACOSTA: All right.

TRUMP: Go ahead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: (LAUGHTER) Jim Acosta, big warrior for women. So I'm excused to go first. Author and columnist Mark Steyn joins us tonight. So what - let's just be literal for a minute.

MARK STEYN, AUTHOR: Yes.

CARLSON: What does that mean exactly?

STEYN: I'm not sure. I am in - in press conferences though, if Jim Acosta is in the room, I am in favor of women and children.

CARLSON: (LAUGHTER) I think it's ridiculous.

STEYN: And I hope they are all out of - all the lifeboats are gone before Jim Acosta turn comes. This is actually far more condescending and sexist than all the old dead white Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

(LAUGHTER)

Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch in their worst nightmares couldn't be more sexist and condescending than that. Women reporters generally are tough, they don't need gentlemen Jim Acosta to hold the door for them to let them through, so they can get a question in.

Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday 1939, 18 years ago, Rose Russell played tough no-nonsense reporter. She would've punched Jim Acosta's lights out for the condescending--

CARLSON: Look, I'm not in any - I'm not making any specific claims against anybody, but have you noticed as you've lived in this country for a long time that the people who make the loudest noises about what feminists they are, tend to have a more spotty record with women in their own lives.

STEYN: Yes, I think that's absolute true and I think that's actually what's underpinning some of this. I think there's an element of projection in the whole Democrat media savagery on this Kavanaugh issue. They've had a rough year. They've lost the senator. They've lost comrades (ph) in the House on the Democrat side; on the media, they've lost some of the most feted figures, whether it's Charlie Rose.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: Whether it's Matt Lauer, whether it's Harvey Weinstein; all these people that Kirsten Gillibrand is being photographed with--

CARLSON: Well, let me ask you about Kirsten Gillibrand. So, she has not - through the course of this Kavanaugh story, hasn't simply ignored due process or the presumption of innocence. She has bragged about ignoring those things, watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y.: To those who are here say over and over, this isn't fair to Judge Kavanaugh. He's entitled to due process. What about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? He's not entitled to those because we're not actually seeking to convict him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, we have another talking about (inaudible) can handle it, but she basically says, "If you support due process and presumption of innocence, you're part of the problem."

STEYN: Yes.

CARLSON: So, shut up.

STEYN: Yes.

CARLSON: This kind of feels like the beginning of something new and ominous.

STEYN: No, it's absolutely awful, this. This is the Viscount Sankey with Lord Chancellor in England and actually did the thing that eventually became the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The presumption of innocence isn't just a criminal court value; it's actually a human right. It's a civilizational value and it's what Viscount Sankey called the golden thread in English Law.

And what these people like Kirsten Gillibrand, who's a lawyer, is actually doing is taking the scissors and cutting up the golden thread. Now, she says it's not a Criminal Court. No, it's beyond that. It's the Senate in its advice and consent - actually it's the it's the U.S. equivalent of the Lord Chancellor.

The Lord Chancellor in England appoints judges; the Senate does it here. And so, what that does, when the state actually says there's no presumption of innocence. 100 Americans out of 300 million get to be U.S. senators and if they don't believe in the presumption of innocence, that's something that every American should be concerned about. When the most powerful figures in the land like Kirsten Gillibrand are willing to trash - you mentioned Mark Judge. For the next 30 years, when anybody Googles his name- -

CARLSON: Yes.

STEYN: All they're going to see is that he apparently led all these gang rape parties all across the land.

CARLSON: It's unbelievable. So many people are being destroyed now and everyone's terrified. Mark Steyn, thank you very much.

STEYN: Thanks a lot, Tucker.

CARLSON: But after the show, Mark will be rejoining us for a live book signing on Facebook. It'll be on our page at tuckercarlsonFOX. We will also post a link to it in our show page. We've got copies of the new book 'Ship of Fools' out Monday, answering questions from viewers. You can pre-order a signed one if you like. It's Ship of Fools books.com (ph). That's right after tonight's show on Facebook. We'll be back.

Not every person on the left is like Kirsten Gillibrand, thank heaven. Alan Dershowitz who is a Democrat, a liberal Democrat, is still demanding due process and I'll do that on our show after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Brett Kavanaugh' story has hurt an awful lot of people already, but the biggest victim may be America's basic sense of justice. Norms like the presumption of innocence, due process, fairness itself have all been shoved aside in a political frenzy. Question is could tomorrow's hearing start to undo the damage?

(inaudible) is a man who has relentlessly defended fairness at great personal cost and even when it has worked against the interests of the party he votes for, the Democrats, is of course Alan Dershowitz, retired Harvard law professor, the author of 'The Case Against Impeaching Trump' and we welcome him now.

Professor, thanks very much for coming on.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, AUTHOR OF THE CASE AGAINST IMPEACHING TRUMP: Thank you.

CARLSON: So, what do you want not as a partisan or some new votes for Democrats, but as someone who cares about preserving our justice system, what do you want to see in these hearings tomorrow?

DERSHOWITZ: I want to see the greatest engine of truth ever invented used effectively, namely cross-examination, and I'm worried that we don't have the right people. The woman who has been hired to conduct the cross- examination has probably rarely ever cross-examined anybody; she's a prosecutor. Prosecutors are put on cases, mostly defendants don't check (ph) the stand.

CARLSON: Right.

DERSHOWITZ: And so, this is a woman with 20 years of experience as a prosecutor, but no experience as a defense attorney. So, I don't think she's the right person to question Dr. Ford and there needs to be cross- examination not only of her, but of the new Avenatti allegation. That affidavit is so deeply flawed and so open-ended that any good lawyer, any good defense attorney would be able to tear that apart in 30 seconds.

It's an embarrassment to the law that anybody would file an affidavit like that filled with hearsay, filled with 'well, I was raped but he didn't rape me. He was there. He saw it. Where was he? There are witnesses, people told me. It happened ten times. I went back. I knew there were rapes going on, but I went back to the party.' This is such a deeply flawed affidavit. I didn't expect it from Michael Avenatti.

CARLSON: Well, let me stop you there.

DERSHOWITZ: Yes.

CARLSON: Well, let me ask you about that. Is this affidavit - does it cross some line where there could be professional consequences? There is a Bar Association that gives out legal licenses, could they act on that?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, no. I don't think it breaches that line, but it certainly is an extraordinarily weak affidavit. I want to know who drafted it. I want to know why they didn't fill in the gaps.

CARLSON: Right.

DERSHOWITZ: If there are people who saw this, name them. Was she raped, does she say by Kavanaugh, by judge? Did she - did he see it? Was he in the room? Why - why didn't, if there were gang rapes like that, how did it not get to the police? It's a shocking affidavit and any lawyer who loves cross-examination would love nothing more than to examine a witness holding that affidavit in his hands--

CARLSON: Yes.

DERSHOWITZ: --and saying, here, here, here. But Avenatti doesn't care about that. All he cares about is getting the headline. The headline has been gotten. Maybe she'll testify, maybe she won't. But if she testifies, she'll be cross-examined in a very effective manner by a good cross-examiner.

CARLSON: I wonder though, are we reaching a place where the social pressure on all of us not to ask real questions, not to see if the claims align with common sense has become so intense, that everyone's too afraid to ask real questions?

DERSHOWITZ: Oh, it's terrible because you had a woman today on television saying, it's sexist to have appointed a woman lawyer. She would have said it was sexist to appoint a male lawyer. You need a gender-neutral robot now to cross-examine if you want to avoid claims of sexism. It's a no-win.

Cross-examination must be effective and it must be tough. It has to be respectful. You can be respectful and tough, but do not pull punches. There's so much at stake here, a man's life, his reputation, his career, his family, the women, their credibility, the people--

CARLSON: Right.

DERSHOWITZ: --of America having a justice sitting on the Supreme Court, the stakes are too high.

Look, I don't agree with the Republicans that you have to take a vote on Friday. I don't agree with the Republicans that there shouldn't be a continuing background check.

CARLSON: Right.

DERSHOWITZ: There's no reason not to have a background check. Time should not be the determining factor when you're putting somebody on the Supreme Court for a lifetime; truth has to be the determining factor. We can't let this vote happen until we know whether these serious allegations did or did not occur, and there can't be a presumption of guilt.

CARLSON: There can't be a presumption of guilt?

DERSHOWITZ: No.

CARLSON: You're one of the very few who's saying that. This moment must be driving you crazy. Professor, thank you very much--

DERSHOWITZ: Thank you.

CARLSON: --for defending values that I thought we all had in common, but apparently don't. Great to see it.

DERSHOWITZ: I thought too. Thank you.

CARLSON: Dozens of people who know Brett Kavanaugh very well are defending him tonight. One is here for her first television interview; that's after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: In this case, you are guilty until proven innocent. I think that is a very, very dangerous standard for our country. With that being said, I look forward to what she has to say. I also look very forward to what Judge Kavanaugh has to say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: That was the President at his press conference today. Well, more than 60 of Brett Kavanaugh's childhood friends have now signed a statement defending him as a man, defending his character.

Missy Bigelow Carr has known Kavanaugh since high school. She signed that letter; she joins us tonight.

Missy Carr, thank you very much for joining us.

MISSY BIGELOW CARR, HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND OF BRETT KAVANAUGH: Thanks.

CARLSON: When you hear these allegations levied against a man you've known for 35 years, what's your response.

CARR: It's heartbreaking, for one, to see our friend go through this horrible process that he's going through and the allegations, and knowing that they're just unfounded.

One is more salacious than the next, it's just not the man that we know, it is not the guy that we knew 35 years ago, and since then.

CARLSON: So there was never a moment, since you've known him continuously and you were there when he was in high school, where you thought--

CARR: No.

CARLSON: --I don't know, who knows maybe?

CARR: Never, never.

CARLSON: So, these new claims today that there were a series of widely attended parties at which gang rapes took place, people don't really don't know I think how small these communities are-- CARR: Correct.

CARLSON: --if there had been ten of these at which people were raped in public, do you think--

CARR: If there was one of those, that would have been an enormous uproar among all the Catholic schools. It would spread like wildfire, even if it was a public school, if any Catholic school kids were involved. Not ten, ten would never happen. If even one happened like that, it would have been known.

CARLSON: So this claim today being taken seriously throughout the press by many politicians that there were at least 10 rape parties that Bret Kavanaugh took part in that somehow no one heard about for 35 years, that does not strike you as credible.

CARR: A 100 percent not credible, don't believe any of that. I never experienced anything like that, never heard of anything like that. Like I said, if anything even close to that had happened, word would have traveled like wildfire through our different schools and communities and parents and all of that.

CARLSON: How do you think the Kavanaugh family is doing in the face of all this?

CARR: I think they're trying to stay strong. I think they know they have a lot of support, even though they see the opposite on their doorsteps and in other ways. But we're all here to support them and I think they know that.

CARLSON: I think it's just important to remember that these are people--

CARR: They are.

CARLSON: --that beings (ph) not that simple.

CARR: Yes, not easy on the poor children and there's children involved and all of that.

CARLSON: Yes, that's awful. Thank you very much.

CARR: All right, thanks for having me.

CARLSON: I appreciate it, Missy Carr.

Well, a lot is going on this story. It's developing in all kinds of different directions. Even tonight, every person who's covering this is getting text after email after text, alleging new things, new threads. We can't assess which one - which ones of them are true, but of course we will, and we will bring that to you continuously.

(inaudible) covering tomorrow's Senate hearing. That starts at 9:00 a.m. and will be going for a lot of the day. That's it for us tonight. Tune in every night to the show that's the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink. Good night from Washington. Sean Hannity is in New -- Sean Hannity has now shown up on our set here in Washington.

Content and Programming Copyright 2018 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2018 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.

Fox News First