On September 4, 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened confirmation hearings, and within hours a Twitter theory alleging that Kavanaugh staffer Zina Bash had flashed a 'white power' hand sign while seated behind him at the hearing racked up tens of thousands of retweets, though the interpretation was widely disputed9. Ten days later, on September 14, The New Yorker broke the existence of Ford's confidential letter and reported that Senate Democrats had referred the complaint to the FBI2.

Ford went public in a Washington Post interview on September 16, and a second accuser, Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, came forward in a New Yorker report on September 23 alleging that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a party during the 1983-84 academic year3. Kavanaugh released his 1982 personal calendars in an attempt to show he had not attended the party Ford described, but Twitter mocked entries like 'Beach Week' and joked about a 17-year-old keeping meticulous datebooks. On September 26, attorney Michael Avenatti released a sworn declaration from a third accuser, Julie Swetnick, and the following day Ford and Kavanaugh both testified in a nationally televised hearing.

The final week generated its own meme cycle. On October 1, the New York Times reported that Kavanaugh had been questioned but not arrested by New Haven police in 1985 for throwing ice at another patron at a bar following a UB40 concert, which Twitter turned into a running joke about the soft reggae band's catalog5. The Times then had to publicly acknowledge that co-byline Emily Bazelon had tweeted opposition to Kavanaugh in July and should not have been assigned to the story6. On October 3, Capitol Police arrested 27-year-old Jackson Cosko, an intern for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, for editing GOP senators' Wikipedia pages with their home addresses and private cell numbers during the hearings8. On October 4, the FBI completed its brief supplemental background investigation, delivered as paper '302' interview summaries readable only inside a Capitol SCIF with no digital copies allowed7. Kavanaugh was confirmed 50-48 on October 6 and sworn in the same day by Chief Justice John Roberts.