Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford told friends about the alleged assault last year

Long before President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Christine Blasey Ford told her friends that he sexually assaulted her back in high school.

Ford "was up and down about whether she was going to go public" with the allegations, her friend Kirsten Leimroth told The Mercury News on Monday. Leimroth said that Ford told her about the alleged assault long before she came forward this year, and said that it's "preposterous" to imagine Ford would make it up. Kavanaugh has categorically denied the allegations.

"There's absolutely no way it's made up. She can't even go home," said Leimroth, explaining that Ford's kids are staying elsewhere and that Ford had shut down her social media accounts since identifying herself. "Why would she do that?" Ford couldn't decide whether coming forward would "do any good," continued Leimroth, because it wasn't an "actual rape." Ford alleges that Kavanaugh forcibly groped her during a party in the 1980s and that he tried to undress her, but may have been struggling due to how intoxicated he was. Ford thought Kavanaugh would "go through" even if she did come forward, per Leimroth, and wondered whether it was worth putting herself through the public scrutiny.

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Another friend, Rebecca White, said that Ford told her about the alleged assault back in 2017, and that she mentioned that her alleged assailant was a federal judge. White said that Ford described the event as "violent" and "physically scary" and said Ford found it difficult to see that Kavanaugh had become "a super powerful guy." Kavanaugh was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006.

Ford told a third friend, Jim Gensheimer, that she was scared Kavanaugh defenders would try to assassinate her character. "I've been trying to forget this all my life, and now I'm supposed to remember every little detail," he recalls her saying. Read more at The Mercury News.