Christine Blasey Ford, the 51- year old Palo Alto University professor who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh 53, of sexual assault at a party in Maryland when they were both teenagers, has reportedly agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. Ford said Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth as he attempted to disrobe her. She asserts that it was only because he was so drunk that she was able to escape his grip. Otherwise she would have been raped.
Judge Kavanaugh has categorically denied the allegations and says that he has no recollection of the party which reportedly took place in the early 1980s when he was 17 and Ford was 15. Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh first surfaced in July when she sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. For reasons that have not yet been disclosed, Senator Feinstein withheld the letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee and consequently Ford’s unsubstantiated accusations were not addressed in either the public or the private questioning of Kavanaugh. The letter which was leaked to the media last week simultaneously catapulted Christine Blasey Ford from anonymity to the top of google search hierarchy and instantly divided the country into instant #MeToo believers and cautious sceptics.
While I do not wish to trivialize Dr. Ford’s accusation and I firmly believe that she has a right to be heard, we should not just blindly accept her blanket accusations against a man who has been nominated for the highest court in the land. Ford does not remember the year (she thinks it was circa 1982), the precise location, how she got to the party etc. Also, the four “witnesses” who Ford said were present at the party have denied knowledge of the party: Kavanaugh, his friends Mark Judge, Patrick Smyth, and Leland Ingham Keyser, a Holton-Arms classmate of Ford. There is also little evidence that Ford ever confided to anyone about this alleged encounter with Kavanaugh. She claims that she told a therapist in 2012 that she was sexually assaulted when she was a teenager. However, the therapist’s notes say that four boys participated in the attack. Ford says two boys (Kavanaugh and Mark Judge) participated.
However, blind acceptance is exactly what congress, Hollywood and the #MeToo movement expect us to offer. Democrat senators including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) all say that Ford is very credible. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) went so far as to tell the “men in this country” to “Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.” In other words, men need to just believe Ford because she is a woman.
The #MeToo movement has made Ford their cause du jour with support from #MeToo initiator actress Alyssa Milano and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus who is also a 1979 graduate of the Holton-Arms School. The #MeToo ladies are even writing to Ivanka Trump asking for her support.
Yet where are the facts? This guilty until proven innocent movement apparently has no restrictions except where the Democrats are concerned. Where was #MeToo when Democrat Minnesota Attorney General Candidate Keith Ellison was charged with assault by a former girlfriend Karen Monahan who actually documented her abuse?
And why did Senator Dianne Feinstein sit on the letter for close to two months? Was it because she did not believe Ford? Or perhaps she did not think the teenage encounter rose to the level of a crime? What about the lie detector test? Ford supposedly did not want to speak publicly about her accusation. If that was the case, why did she take a lie detector test? Perhaps she was pressured to take the test so that Senator Feinstein could get a benchmark on her credibility. But then again if Ford truly believed that she was attacked (even if she wasn’t), it is conceivable that she would pass a lie detector test as she would not be exhibiting the physical mannerisms of someone who is consciously lying.
On another note, very little media attention has been paid to a recent Fox News report concerning the cancellation of a fundraiser for Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) featuring Ford’s attorneys Debra Katz and Lisa Banks. Obviously the event was cancelled due the optics of the situation given that Katz and Banks have been all over the media supporting Ford.
Leah Vukmir, Baldwin’s Republican opponent in the Senate race, was quick to cry foul on Baldwin. “ Senator Baldwin, who opposed Judge Kavanaugh within 48 hours of his nomination and refused to meet with him, will be holding a political fundraiser with the lawyers of Dr. Ford who is now accusing him of sexual assault,” Vukmir said. “Baldwin and her Democrat colleagues will take advantage and fundraise off any situation — even the most egregious.”
The Baldwin fundraiser story is perhaps just a footnote in a much larger story of how the Democrats on the Senate have tried to use every trick in the book to delay and derail the Kavanaugh nomination until after the midterm elections including constant interruptions, costumed protesters, arrests, and Spartacus moments.
And now we have a 36-year-old unsubstantiated sexual assault accusation which is impossible to prove and impossible to refute. The timing sounds more than a little politically motivated. After all, Democrats in Red states will be able to use the sexual assault allegation as their excuse for not voting for Kavanaugh which of course masks the fact that they never had any intention of voting for him in the first place. Said another way, they can reject him because of his alleged crime versus his past rulings on hot button topics like abortion.
The genie is out of the bottle. Ford must testify. The truth will prevail. Kavanaugh will ultimately be confirmed just as Justice Clarence Thomas was, despite the Anita Hill allegations of sexual harassment which similarly threatened to derail his confirmation back in 1991.
As for Christine Blasey Ford, who has been so infrequently photographed that the only “contemporary” picture of her in circulation appears to be about 10 years old, I hope she is ready for the hot seat and the glare of the cameras.
Addendum: Kavanaugh for his part has announced that he has a calendar from the summer of 1982 of his college visits and camp schedule that he is ready to release.
On Sunday night Ronan Farrow broke the news of another Kavanaugh accuser coming forward in the New Yorker. The woman, Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, claims that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at party during their 1983-1984 freshman year. While no one has been able to corroborate Ms. Ramirez story, Senator Dianne Feinstein is already calling for a delay in Thursday’s hearing with Dr. Ford.
Just another delay tactic from the Democrats. The Thursday hearing with Ford needs to go forward.
Image: Screen Shot: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5837804303001/?#sp=show-clips
