After a brutal and emotional day of high-stakes testimony last year, I gave my thoughts about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the only remotely credible accuser against Brett Kavanaugh, who is now an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court: "I found her to be deeply sympathetic, intelligent and compelling," I wrote. "She presented as a reasonable and credible person. Her opening statement was searing, and she handled the question-and-answer session with poise and grace. I do not believe she was actively lying; I think she was recounting what she genuinely believes occurred. Even so, some of the shifts in her account, her inability to remember certain information from recent weeks, and her very weak answer about why her own lifelong female friend failed to corroborate her decades-old story (namely, that her friend is dealing with health issues, and privately apologized for the statement she submitted to the Senate, under penalty of perjury) gave me pause." I continued:
Other skeptics didn't buy that Ford was able to recall having a single beer at the party, as well as every detail of the alleged assault -- yet couldn't pinpoint where or when it happened with any precision, and couldn't recall how she got to and from the gathering she describes. I don't know about that: It seems plausible that someone would be able to vividly remember a very significant life event, even as other details faded into cloudiness, especially many years later. On the other hand, it is significant that by her own admission, she did not disclose anything about that night to anyone for 30 years. She told nobody at the time who could now confirm that she did so. And the other four individuals she specifically named as attendees at the social event have all either directly contradicted her memory, or have declined to corroborate it. These facts matter.
And my verdict:
So after a marathon, emotionally-draining day of powerful and memorable testimony, I found myself right back where I'd begun: Totally unsure of whose account was objectively correct, repulsed by Democrats' machinations, and therefore defaulting back to the evidence -- or lack thereof....I have no idea what did, or did not, occur -- nor does virtually anyone else who's observing this process. So the question boils down to this: Does a highly-qualified, ideologically-acceptable (in my opinion) judge deserve to have his nomination to the Supreme Court jettisoned over an uncorroborated, decades-old allegation?
My answer to that question was 'no.' The reality remains that nobody other than the people involved, or allegedly involved, can possibly say with any certainty did or did not happen. In some ways, it was likely very difficult for Ford to come forward and subject herself to such intense scrutiny -- despite some of the gamesmanship from her team regarding her fear of flying, and the overtly ideological motives to which her lead attorney later admitted. With all of that in mind, one would think that a civil liberties organization would prize the presumption of innocence in the face of totally unproven allegations, but some 'civil liberties' organizations have been so co-opted by politics that their core mission is too often selectively subordinated to other concerns and calculations. And that leads to developments like this. Relatedly and disturbingly, it appears as though many on the Left apparently believe assertions like this:
3. One thing that has changed since Kavanaugh's confirmation is that the evidence against Kavanaugh has gotten STRONGER.
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 14, 2019
Specifically, there are now more corroborating evidence to support the claims of Deborah Ramirez, who wasn't even allowed to testifyhttps://t.co/amtwSyaLCw
This is not merely untrue; I'd argue that it's the opposite of true. The "new" allegation explored by a pair of New York Times reporters totally fell to pieces when it was revealed that the supposed "victim" has no recollection of any such incident taking place. Thus, an effort to buttress another non-credible accusation against Kavanaugh (featuring the bogus crowd-sourced "memory" recreated by a former Yale student, decades later) imploded on the launchpad. The same reporters did, however, discover a very pertinent new piece of new information that significantly weakens Ford's case. Namely, Ford's own close friend and star witness, having been pressured intensely to lie about her own memories by Ford allies, now says she has come to the conclusion that she can no longer believe Ford's story:
New Book: Christine Blasey Ford's Friend Leland Keyser Doesn't Believe Her - The Federalist https://t.co/we1X5XjU6p
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 16, 2019
We have also learned that Ford's own father evidently did not believe his daughter's account, and supported Kavanaugh's confirmation. Neither of these recently-established facts are determinative, but they move the preponderance of (extremely scant) evidence even further in Kavanaugh's direction.
