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I'm not sure what would lead her to do that.
My guess throughout was that she knew Kavanaugh had spoken to a specific person at that law firm, and was looking for either a denial (which she would confront with evidence to the contrary) or else confirmation (which she would use to question its propriety). She even set up her (presumptive, but not actual) followup with "So you're denying it?" at the end.
If she didn't even do a press release detailing what Kavanaugh should have answered and why the facts are damaging to him, then I don't know what her game was. Maybe Kavanaugh was on to something with "Are you thinking of a specific person?": maybe she wasn't.
EDIT: a better theory is that she was fishing for "I don't know who I spoke to about it", but Kavanaugh never gave that answer. He only said that he spoke to fellow judges, and that he didn't know who worked at the law firm. When asked if there was another way to know if he had spoken to someone at that law firm (fishing for "I spoke with some people I don't know well", maybe) he deflected back to the roster of employees.
Maybe she just thought she would show the country her prosecutor skills by making someone squirm on the stand, but forgot that the someone was one of the top judges in the land.
It'd be understandable for even a top judge to squirm on the stand in such a situation, where the "prosecution" is playing Calvinball as Calvin. That makes it all the more impressive Kavanaugh was able to make the "'and' to 'or'" catch, as @sarker pointed out.
Unfortunately, only dorks like us Mottizens are impressed by stuff like this. For most of everyone else it's a "and the crowd goes mild" type of a reaction.
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