The Washington Post reports Writer of Confidential Brett Kavanaugh Letter, Speaks Out About Her Allegation of Sexual Assault.
>Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.
>Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be the one to tell it.
>Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both “stumbling drunk,” Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County.
>Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.
Allegations Denied
According to the Post, Ford had contacted Senator Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, in but Ford wanted to keep her identity a secret.
Feinstein leaked some details and Ford then decided to come into the open.
Both Kavanaugh and Judge deny the incident. “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time,” said Kavanaugh.
Pelosi Proud of Ford
Courage? What Courage?
To praise someone’s courage, one has to assume the underlying story is true.
Is it? How the hell would Pelosi know?
There are a few holes in Ford’s story. Returning to the Washington Post:
>Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.” The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.
Now Ford says “I thought he might inadvertently kill me.”
Really?
Well one never knows what may be going on in someone’s mind, so it’s possible. But even assuming the event took place, that charge is likely more than a bit exaggerated. The therapist’s notes do not mention it.
Motive
Today we discover Ford has not only a political motive but a non-political motive.
PowerLIne reports Kavanaugh’s Mother Ruled Against Accuser’s Parents.
>It looks like Brett Kavanaugh’s mother, Judge Martha Kavanaugh, ruled against the parents of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accuses Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Court documents show the losing party in a foreclosure case Martha Kavanaugh heard to be Ralph and Paula Blasey of Potomac, Maryland. They appear to be Christine Blasey Ford’s parents.
>The fact that Kavanaugh’s mother ruled against Ford’s parents doesn’t prove Ford is lying about the conduct of the son. Her allegation, coming so many years after the fact and without a description of when or where the event supposedly occurred, is probably not susceptible to being ruled out conclusively. But there now seems to be a motive, beyond partisan politics, for Ford to make up or significantly embellish her story so long after the “fact.”
>In any event, the fact that Ford’s story, having been presented so late and with little detail as to time and place, is probably not susceptible to being ruled out means that, if not “ruled in” conclusively, the story should not preclude Kavanaugh’s confirmation. We have statutes of limitations for a reason.
>Finally, unless we accept the view that Kavanaugh truly attempted to rape this girl, I don’t believe his conduct provides a basis for rejecting his nomination. Kavanaugh was still a teenager. More than five dozen women who knew him at the time vouch for his behavior. His female law clerks consider him a gentleman and a mentor.
>So even assuming that, on one occasion, the teenage Kavanaugh, having had too much to drink, engaged in serious misconduct towards this girl, I fail to see why this should bar him from the Supreme Court.
>I don’t assume this occurred, however. It seems more likely that Ms. Ford has invented or substantially embellished this story — out of political bias, animus towards the family because of the court case, or both.
Court of Public Opinion
I agree with PowerLine on all accounts.
There are many holes in Ford’s story. The males involved both deny it and the woman did not want to pursue it until Feinstein forced the issue into the open. Ford has both political and non-political reasons to press the case now.
I am neither dismissing the allegation outright, nor defending Kavanaugh if it’s true.
But the bottom line is this case is being decided on the basis of an allegation of what a clumsy guy did in high school while drunk. The allegations are not of a rape, but of loutish, drunken behavior by a 17-year-old.
This does not in any way reflect on his suitability as a Supreme Court justice.
Naturally, this puts the two Republican women Senators in a tough spot. Senator Susan Collins (R Maine) has already been threatened with donations to any Democratic opponent if she votes for Kavanaugh.
Irony
The irony in this absurd setup is that Kavanaugh may be willing to let Roe v Wade stand. It’s highly likely Trump’s next nominee would not do so.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Respect Due Process. Make her tell it to the local grand jury under oath.
I’m very tired of this never ending circus thanks to Feinstein, I’d rather listen to more of John McCain’s heroic career stepping across the aisle hugging Democrats or maybe having my teeth drilled at the dentist.
OT: Kavanaugh desperately needs to visit a different barber… yikes. Looks like a Sears catalog menswear model circa 1978.
Democrats have no shame. They will regret their behavior of these past 2 years. All this “resistance” did was expose progressive cynicism, hypocrisy & cowardice. The electorate has definitely noticed.
It seems like any unprovable allegation can stop a supreme court nominee. Too many people are so clueless, including some politicians (the others are just despicable), that we allow such farce to go on. This woman suffers no consequence and may enrich herself even if she lies. There is no way that she can prove her allegation in a court of law and everyone knows it. This is not seeking justice. This is smear and libel.
High School ? Are you sure ? And may be in preschool ?
The woman’s story has a giant hole in it — the fact that she has not brought forward a bunch of schoolmates who recall hearing about the incident at the time.
My recollection of life as a teenage boy was that we all quickly learned the lesson that teenage girls talk and talk and talk. Whatever happened on a date — the girl would tell her best friends and they would talk to their friends and, in short order, everyone at school would know what happened (or an inflated version of it). In the absence of that kind of contemporaneous corroboration, common sense says the alleged event did not happen.
Please let’s not be too hard on loutish teenage boys — that was you & me, brother; we were all dumb testosterone-driven idiots in those days. And let’s not be too sympathetic to 15-year old girls who go to unsupervised swimming/drinking parties with teenage boys. Unless she was already the class slut, that was pretty damn stupid behavior on her part.
Who better to take away women’s reproductive rights than an accused attempted rapist? Looking at the bigger picture, I can’t imagine a more effective way to drive a wedge between the right wing and women in America.
Another f**kin pop-up BIMBO? Didn’t we just have one of those in AL that promptly disappeared with six figures? Too bad the Senate pssies won’t grill her like a rapist with the threat of perjury repeated after every answer. Cross examine her until she has a dozen counts 18usc1001. This sht would end prompto.
Don’t you know “sexual assault” is the package deal anti-concept that puts the momentary groping of drunk teenagers in the same category as rape.
Why God Is Laughing at Brett Kavanaugh
American politics is about power, not principle. If anyone should know this, it’s Brett Kavanaugh.
September 17, 2018
God, it’s sometimes said, has an awesome sense of humor; if so, the Almighty must have been vastly entertained by the turns of fortune on display this past weekend in American politics.
Not amused, to be clear, by the sad story of what a middle-aged university professor recalls of an ugly night in high school with future Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and how it echoed in her mind for years. An uproar over this allegation Sunday pivoted quickly from the first question—what’s true?—to an equally vexing one: What is even fair to be debating some 36 years after the fact?
….
So here was Kavaunagh—who spent his early thirties as a Ken Starr warrior pursuing Bill Clinton for the political and legal implications of his most intimate moral failings—now in his early fifties facing a political crisis over disturbingly vivid, passionately contested, decades-old allegations about Kavanaugh’s own possible moral failings.
….
I don’t care for your strong implication that this incident didn’t happen the way it was described. You are a bit of a “know-it-all” in my estimation.
Skepticism is in order. One apparently-troubled individual asserts that a certain incident happened 30 years ago — although she can’t quite remember where or when or whether it was 2 or 4 boys, and she has no contemporaneous corroboration. The two named boys both assert that the incident did not happen. Draw your own conclusions.
Remember this is happening in the middle of a highly politicized confirmation process, and the woman is a known partisan. And remember that there have been many instances in recent years of women falsely claiming they have been assaulted or raped. And remember there are several cases of clear assaults on women which have been ignored because of the identity of the perpetrator (eg Clinton, Kennedy). The Left has made the world much more difficult for any woman who has truly been assaulted to obtain justice.
#METOO, #METOO!!
The unverifiable, last minute bad news about a candidate is a very old dirty tricks political tactic. The dems know their only chance to stop the Kavanaugh nomination is to delay until after the election and hope they get a senate majority. This tactic will backfire with people able to think objectively.
The story about Kavanaugh’s mother has already been debunked. She did make a ruling on the foreclosure case: she dismissed it and the Fords kept their home. If Chrissy Ford wasn’t such a nut case she would be grateful.
Saul Alinsky tactics once again from Democrats.
Made up story from way back just before vote to destroy a career with wild claims.
My biggest problem with Kavanaugh is that he is loved by Koch Brothers aka Amnesty brothers and that Kavanaugh was picked by Whitehouse lawyer Donald McGahn who also picked previous supreme court pick Gorsuch.
Gorsuch’s first vote was voting with the Supreme court’s 4 liberals 5-4 to make it HARDER to deport criminal immigrants…
Trump is acting like a puppet for Koch Brothers and Trump is too stupid to realize it.
Vice-President Pence is Koch Brothers controlled and Budget Director Mich Mulvaney is Koch Brothers controlled and they told Trump to sign the Omnibus with NO WALL and now Trump is being treated like an idiot yet again by getting him to sign several Minibus funding bills with NO WALL.
McConnell and retiring-Ryan showed Trump pretty pictures of some fencing repairs and called it a wall and made Trump believe the LIE that it would be better to leave the WALL after mid-terms.
Ryan will be gone by then and Republicans will have lost the majority in the house so there will NEVER be a wall and Koch Brothers, Pence and Mulvaney will be happy that Trump was such an idiot that he agreed to be a puppet for Koch Brothers and forget the WALL when he could have demanded it just because Pence was *ss-kissing Trump all the time and Mulvaney was telling Trump how smart Trump is.
If you do NOT know who the mark is the mark is YOU.
Trump is the mark and Koch Brothers are playing Trump through Mike Pence and Mick Mulvaney and sabotaging the wall and all other immigration related election promises Trump made.
Currently, in the US, anything related to #metoo activities is viewed as equivalent to child molestation. So even if Kavanaugh is innocent, it may tarnish him to the point of being too toxic to confirm. Evidence doesn’t matter.
Hes gonna be confirmed anyway. This is the one and only chance the Republicans have to gut Roe v Wade and gay marriage. This is McConnells only chance to be as remembered as Reagan. I think you are reaching a whole lot, Mish, cause women, even political hacks, dont scream phony “RAPE” very much. An elite boys school? With guys who know they will rule the world very soon? Come on! Kav is like every other drunk teenage guy. He grabs it when its in front of his face.
If it takes some woman 3 decades to figure out she was raped, only to start screaming about it when politically, socially and possibly financially advantageous, it’s phony by definition.
Really ask your wife or mother if it was OK to come forward 30 years ago on something like this. You posses absolutely no contextual historical or cultural knowledge what so ever…
Rape has been a recognized crime since before biblical times. Women have “come forward” for that long.
If whatever some dude did, wasn’t bad enough to go to the authorities with back when there were fresh evidence available, it wasn’t bad enough to justify dragging the government and legal system into it at all.
A civilized legal system works off of evidence. Making it paramount that those who want to avail themselves of it, step forward as soon as possible. If they decline to do so, fine. Leave it be. But this sort of childishness, does nothing but erode whatever tiny residual of faith in, and respect for, US law that may still exist. It’s all just a banana court now. By and for dumb children without the aptitude to see past the basest of partisan hunches, feelings and intuitions.
“This does not in any way reflect on his suitability as a Supreme Court justice.”
However, lying about it under oath is! Not that you care….
And you assume he is lying. Were you there with Pelosi?
I’m not assuming anything. All I know that you said:”But the bottom line is this case is being decided on the basis of an allegation of what a clumsy guy did in high school while drunk. The allegations are not of a rape, but of loutish, drunken behavior by a 17-year-old.”
And that implies that you don’t consider intent of rape while a teenager serious enough to eliminate him. I on the other hand say that if he did it then he should be eliminated for perjury.
TIA, as the Africans put it. This is America.