Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh's primary sexual accuser, is currently out on a book tour. Because her unsupported allegations will therefore be injected back into the national bloodstream, it's important to review some key facts. First off, let's review how the claims of four other Kavanaugh accusers during the ludicrous, circus-like 2018 pile-on fell apart under scrutiny. One woman came forward and said nothing untoward ever happened, rejecting false allegations brought forth by others as "offensive and absurd." Separately, it was revealed that another woman tried to 'crowd source' a memory, phoning former Yale classmates to try to cobble together a recollection of what had supposedly happened to her at a dorm gathering decades ago. She couldn't remember basic details of the 'incident,' let alone whether Kavanaugh was involved at all -- and all three 'witnesses' she named all publicly refuted her story. Another woman recanted her story entirely, admitting that she leveled it "to get attention" and because she was "angry."
Then there was the insane 'serial gang rape' fantasy raised by a disturbed individual being represented by since-imprisoned lawyer Michael Avenatti. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, along with Chuck Schumer, disgracefully seized upon Julie Swetnick's preposterous lie to call for Kavanaugh's nomination to be withdrawn. This woman had a history of extreme dishonesty, misconduct, and legal drama, then walked back key elements of her own claims. Of the four 'corroborating' witnesses she initially listed, two offered no support for her claims, one said he didn't even know her, and the other was dead. Swetnick was referred for criminal prosecution for making false statements. Before we return to Ford, consider how disturbing and shameful this feeding frenzy was. We just ran through four allegations against Kavanaugh, all of which were ultimately demonstrated as unmoored to credible evidence, or affirmatively debunked. They threw everything imaginable at this man to derail his nomination. They failed, and justice prevailed -- but they tried, very aggressively.
Which brings us back to Ford. Her accusation was the main event, showcased in high-stakes Congressional testimony. Democrats sat on her claims for months, thrusting them into the spotlight at a strategic moment, well into the confirmation process. What emerged was that the four other people Ford said were at the fateful party that evening many years ago unanimously refused to corroborate any portion of her story. Speaking of her story, it changed repeatedly. A veteran sex crimes prosecutor identified numerous inconsistencies, underscoring the profound weakness and unreliability of Ford's account. Ford could not remember where or when the alleged assault took place, making her recollection all but impossible to disprove. Nevertheless, it turned out that zero evidence -- none -- could even establish that Ford and Kavanaugh had ever even met. While promoting her book on The View, Ford responded to a question from one of the co-hosts who lamented that "some people still remain skeptical" of her accusations:
ABC’s @sarahaines to Christine Blasey Ford: “Even today some people remain skeptical of your story” pic.twitter.com/MomNLed6ML
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 19, 2024
Ford mentions the aforementioned female prosecutor who deemed her a non-credible witness and persuaded key Senators with a key memo arguing that it would be a grotesque miscarriage of justice to lend credence to her claims. She concluded that, "in the legal context, here is my bottom line: A “he said, she said” case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard."
Unmentioned in the televised exchange above is the fact that among the "some" who "remain skeptical" of Ford's story are her own father, who doesn't believe her, and her own close friend and key witness, Leland Keyser. Indeed, the only major new fact that came to light during this messy episode was Keyser's change of heart. She'd previously said that she believed her friend, even if she couldn't help fortify her story. By the end of the process, Keyser no longer believed Ford, telling the FBI that she was bullied, pressured, and threatened to change her account in order to hurt Kavanaugh. Bombshells, via the Wall Street Journal:
A friend of Christine Blasey Ford told FBI investigators that she felt pressured by Dr. Ford’s allies to revisit her initial statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh, which she later updated to say that she believed but couldn’t corroborate Dr. Ford’s account...Dr. Ford’s allies were working behind the scenes to lobby old classmates to bolster their versions of the alleged incident,
The Federalist:
A group text was formed in which [Ford allies] such as Cheryl Amitay and Lulu Gonella discussed how to get her to say something more helpful to the cause. An unnamed man on the text suggested that they defame her as an addict...“I was told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn’t comply,” Keyser told the reporters, a stunning admission of the pressure to which she was subjected to by Blasey Ford’s allies.
And the New York Times:
We spoke multiple times to Keyser, who also said that she didn’t recall that get-together or any others like it. In fact, she challenged Ford’s accuracy. “I don’t have any confidence in the story.”
Subsequent to Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation, Ford's own attorney admitted on camera that a key element of their team's motivation to pursue these unfounded accusations was to impact abortion-related jurisprudence. They wanted to manufacture an asterisk to hang on Kavanaugh's name and rulings, for flagrantly ideological reasons. And for some, it worked. Just the other day, a leftist official in Athens, Georgia went on a deranged tirade about the murder of nursing student Laken Riley. Unable to face the egregious facts of the case, and the cascade of leftist policies that contributed to the slaying, this woman ripped into her preferred bogeymen in a string of non-sequiturs, one of which was mentioning two Supreme Court justices who have been "credibly accused of sexual assault." This is a lie. The accusations against Kavanaugh are not credible. Credibility requires evidence. And the accuser of Justice Clarence Thomas (who was accused of harassment, not assault) is also not credible. Anita Hill was called a liar by FBI agents connected to the case, and was widely viewed as not telling the truth by the public, back when she took center stage.
If partisans insist on repeating and recycling uncorroborated smears in order to damage people and institutions for political reasons, it is essential to marshal facts to challenge them aggressively. The fact is that there are zero credible claims, backed by evidence, that Brett Kavanaugh (or Clarence Thomas for that matter) is guilty of any misconduct -- sexual or otherwise. And yet, this is the sort of glowing, alternate-reality coverage she will generate from her tribe:
Christine Blasey Ford’s new memoir places her Senate testimony in the wider context of her life. And as her story goes on, it "comes to read as an indictment—not of one person, but of a form of politics that sees stories as weapons in an endless war,” @megangarber writes.… pic.twitter.com/KCTVTs7Jh0
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 19, 2024
"She offered evidence...she spoke science." Total nonsense. I'll leave you with authoritative expert Mollie Hemingway's response to all of this:
1. There Is No Evidence that Ford and Kavanaugh Ever Met
2. Leland Keyser Said She Did Not Have ‘Any Confidence’ in Her Friend’s Story
3. Friends Pressured Keyser to Change Her Story
4. All Alleged Witnesses Strongly Dispute the Claim
5. Ford’s Father Supported Kavanaugh’s Confirmation
6. Ford Doesn’t Know the Location
7. Ford Doesn’t Know How She Arrived
8. Ford Does Not Know How She Got Home
9. Ford Does Not Know the Date or Even What Time of Week
10. Ford Somehow Remembers She Had Precisely One Beer, But Not Other Details
11. Kavanaugh’s Contemporaneous Calendars Support His Claim
12. Ford Changed the Date of the Incident by Years from Her Initial Stories
13. Character Witnesses from the Time Support Kavanaugh
14. Ford’s First Mention of Kavanaugh’s Name is 2012, After He Became a National Figure
15. False Claims Were Made about Ford’s Inability to Fly
16. Ford Scrubbed Her Social Media
17. Ford Said She Wanted to Stay Confidential, But First Call Was to Washington Post
18. Ford’s Attorney Admitted a Motive of Desiring an Asterisk by Kavanaugh’s Name
19. Ford Has Benefited Politically, Financially, and Socially
20. Nothing in Kavanaugh’s Past Remotely Similar to the Claim for 37 Years
If they keep insisting on relitigating this fight, said fight must be engaged.