President questioned Christine Blasey Ford’s credibility on Friday and said panel should ‘take the vote’ whether she testifies or not

Donald Trump cast doubt on the woman who accused his supreme court pick Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, and on Friday blamed opponents for trying to “destroy” his nominee while chivvying for a vote.

After days of restrained comments about the allegations from the California professor Christine Blasey Ford, Trump tweeted on Friday, questioning her account of what happened between her and Kavanaugh at a party in 1982 when they were in high school. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” Trump said. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!

Trump said he believes Kavanaugh is “under assault by radical leftwing politicians”. In the tweets on Friday, he said that Kavanaugh has an “impeccable reputation” and that Democrats “don’t want to know the answers, they just want to destroy and delay”.

A Senate panel vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, scheduled for Thursday, was delayed after Ford’s allegations came out last week.

Ford told a Senate committee she would be willing to testify later next week as a Friday morning deadline set by the Republican-led Senate judiciary committee for her to confirm whether she would testify on Monday came and went. The panel had scheduled a hearing for 10amon Monday, which is now in the balance.

The president further weighed in late Friday morning with another tweet demanding: “Let her testify, or not, and TAKE THE VOTE!”

The full tweet again criticized the committee Democrat Dianne Feinstein for not revealing the letter she received with Ford’s allegations sooner.

Within minutes, women, including leading feminist writers, began tweeting alongside the hashtag #WhyIDidn’tReport, which began trending, about the bad experiences they had had when they had reported sexual violence to the authorities, especially as teens.

Jessica Valenti tweeted: “The only time I ever went to the police was after a man tried to pull me into his car when I was 19. The beat cops were annoyed that I didn’t know the make of the vehicle, or if it had two doors or four.” She added that she had been terrified the police would not believe her.

Another woman wrote: “I was drunk, he was a varsity athlete. I couldn’t prove anything.”

Many police departments and courts do not have a good record on dealing with sexual assault victims, despite more of them speaking out in recent years.

Ford is asking for the hearing on Capitol Hill in which she will testify against Kavanaugh be moved to next Thursday.

Ford had already indicated that she cannot be prepared by Monday, as the current schedule for a hearing in front of the Senate judiciary committee demands.

The California professor is willing to come to Washington to give her account and be questioned by senators, but doesn’t want Kavanaugh in the same room, her attorney told judiciary committee staff in a 30-minute phone call later on Thursday. The conversation also touched on security concerns and others issues, according to a Senate aide who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because public discussion of the matter was unauthorized.

Ford is willing to give her account to the judiciary committee, whose senators need to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation before it goes to a full Senate vote.

But she will only appear if agreement can be reached on “terms that are fair and which ensure her safety”, the attorney, Debra Katz, said in an email to the committee revealed earlier on Thursday. In the later call, the lawyer said Ford needed more time to secure her family, prepare her testimony and travel to the capital. No decisions were reached, the aide said.

On Thursday night, Donald Trump, who had been uncharacteristically restrained in his comments on the crisis, challenged Ford’s story, during an interview with Fox News while at a rally in Las Vegas.

“I think it’s a very sad situation,” said Trump, asking: “Why didn’t somebody call the FBI 36 years ago? … What’s going on?”

While he said Ford should “have her say”, he made clear he was done waiting: “I don’t think you can delay it any longer. They’ve delayed it a week already.”

Kavanaugh, 53, currently a judge on the powerful US court of appeals for the DC circuit, has repeatedly denied her allegation. The accusation has jarred the 53-year-old conservative jurist’s prospects for winning confirmation which, until Ford’s emergence last week, had seemed all but certain.

It also emerged this week that a prominent Yale law professor told students it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models” and would provide advice to them about their physical appearance if they wanted to work for him.

Republicans are anxious to move ahead to a vote by the committee, where they hold an 11-10 majority, and then by the full Senate, which they control, 51-49.

Taylor Foy, the spokesman for Republicans on the panel, said after the Thursday phone call that Grassley “will consult with his colleagues on the committee. He remains committed to providing a fair forum for both Dr Ford and Judge Kavanaugh.”

Katz emphasized that Ford, 51, a psychology professor in northern California, has received death threats and for safety reasons has relocated her family.