Democrats in the US Senate are investigating a new bombshell allegation of sexual misconduct against President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, The New Yorker said Sunday. 

Deborah Ramirez, 53, told the magazine Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a college party at Yale University in the 1980s, thrust his genitals in her face and caused her to touch them without her consent.

Kavanaugh denied the incident occurred, calling it "a smear, plain and simple." 

"The people who knew me then know that this did not happen, and have said so," he said in a statement published by the magazine.

Ramirez is the second woman to come forward with a claim of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh in just a few days.

Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor, has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault and will testify before a Senate panel on Thursday about her allegation, her lawyers and the committee said on Sunday.

The agreement came a week after she went public with her allegation against the conservative federal appeals court judge, endangering his confirmation by the Republican-led Senate to a lifetime job on the top US court.

There are, however, unresolved procedural and logistical issues, Ford's lawyers said, including whether the Judiciary Committee's Republican senators, who are all male, or staff attorneys would question her. Ford's lawyers said "various senators have been dismissive of her account and should have to shoulder their responsibility to ask her questions."

Kavanaugh, who has called the allegation "completely false," also has agreed to testify at the hearing planned for 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) on Thursday. The potentially explosive hearing, against a backdrop of the #MeToo movement fighting sexual harassment and assault, comes just weeks before November 6 congressional elections in which Democrats are trying to take control of Congress from Trump's fellow Republicans.

Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, has said Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982 when both were high school students in Maryland. She accused him of attacking her and trying to remove her clothing while he was drunk at a party when he was 17 years old and she was 15.

Ford's lawyers said that in a Sunday morning call with committee staff members they agreed to the hearing even though the committee refused to subpoena Mark Judge, a Kavanaugh friend who Ford said witnessed the attack, as well as others she said were present.

"Despite actual threats to her safety and her life, Dr. Ford believes it is important for senators to hear directly from her about the sexual assault committed against her," Ford's attorneys Debra Katz, Lisa Banks and Michael Bromwich said in a statement.

"She has agreed to move forward with a hearing even though the Committee has refused to subpoena Mark Judge," it said. "They have also refused to invite other witnesses who are essential for a fair hearing that arrives at the truth about the sexual assault."

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, had set several deadlines since Friday for Ford to decide whether and how she would testify before the panel.

"Following Dr. Ford's testimony, Judge Kavanaugh will appear again before the committee," according to a statement from the committee.

Kavanaugh was questioned by committee staff last week.