Over the weekend, 25-year-veteran sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell released a nine page memo detailing the contradictions and lack of evidence presented by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
"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," Mitchell wrote about the situation. "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."
In addition to failing to remember timelines from the past seven weeks, not to mention the past 36 years, Mitchell explained that Ford "struggled" to even name Kavanaugh as the man who she believes engaged in sexual assault against her. She's also had difficulty giving a consistent timeline about when the alleged assault happened, in addition to where the gathering actually occurred. From the memo:
Dr. Ford has struggled to identify Judge Kavanaugh as the assailant by name.
•No name was given in her 2012 marriage therapy notes.
•No name was given in her 2013 individual therapy notes.
•Dr. Ford’s husband claims to recall that she identified Judge Kavanaugh by name in
2012. At that point, Judge Kavanaugh’s name was widely reported in the press as a
potential Supreme Court nominee if Governor Romney won the presidential election.
•In any event, it took Dr. Ford over thirty years to name her assailant. Delayed disclosureof abuse is common so this is not dispositive.
And as a reminder:
Dr. Ford’s account of the alleged assault has not been corroborated by anyone she identified as having attended—including her lifelong friend.
•Dr. Ford has named three people other than Judge Kavanaugh who attended the party—Mark Judge, Patrick “PJ” Smyth, and her lifelong friend Leland Keyser (née Ingham). Dr. Ford testified to the Committee that another boy attended the party, but that she could not remember his name. No others have come forward.
•All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying any memory of the party whatsoever. Most relevantly, in her first statement to the Committee, Ms. Keyser stated through counsel that, “[s]imply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”
In a subsequent statement to the Committee through counsel, Ms. Keyser said that “the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford’s allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.”
Moreover, Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.
You can read the entire memo here.
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