Monday, October 01, 2018

The Mitchell Report

No, not the baseball one. The one that Rachel Mitchell, central figure in the Kavanaugh Klash, put together. WaPo has the document, not that any of Christine Blasey Ford's partisans will accept it:

The main observations, although you should absolutely read the whole thing:
Dr. Ford has not offered a consistent account of when the alleged assault happened.
• In a July 6 text to the Washington Post, she said it happened in the “mid 1980s.”
• In her July 30 letter to Senator Feinstein, she said it happened in the “early 80s.”
• Her August 7 statement to the polygrapher said that it happened one “high school
summer in early 80’s,” but she crossed out the word “early” for reasons she did not
explain.
• A September 16 Washington Post article reported that Dr. Ford said it happened in the
“summer of 1982.”
• Similarly, the September 16 article reported that notes from an individual therapy session
in 2013 show her describing the assault as occurring in her “late teens.” But she told the
Post and the Committee that she was 15 when the assault allegedly occurred. She has not
turned over her therapy records for the Committee to review.
• While it is common for victims to be uncertain about dates, Dr. Ford failed to explain
how she was suddenly able to narrow the timeframe to a particular season and particular
year.
She had help, of course. Who helped her? We're not likely to find out until much later. Back to Mitchell:
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 disclosure of abuse is common so this is not dispositive.
Dispositive? No. But does it raise questions? Mais oui. More:

  • When speaking with her husband, Dr. Ford changed her description of the incident to become less specific.
  • Dr. Ford testified that she told her husband about a “sexual assault” before they were married.
  • But she told the Washington Post that she informed her husband that she was the victim of “physical abuse” at the beginning of their marriage.
  • She testified that, both times, she was referring to the same incident.
  • Dr. Ford has no memory of key details of the night in question—details that could help corroborate her account.
  • She does not remember who invited her to the party or how she heard about it.
  • She does not remember how she got to the party.
  • She does not remember in what house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any specificity.

Specificity would doom her account, most likely. Back to Mitchell:
Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party back to her
house.
• Her inability to remember this detail raises significant questions.
• She told the Washington Post that the party took place near the Columbia Country
Club. The Club is more than 7 miles from her childhood home as the crow flies,
and she testified that it was a roughly 20-minute drive from her childhood home.
• She also agreed for the first time in her testimony that she was driven somewhere
that night, either to the party or from the party or both.
• Dr. Ford was able to describe hiding in the bathroom, locking the door, and
subsequently exiting the house. She also described wanting to make sure that she
did not look like she had been attacked.
• But she has no memory of who drove her or when. Nor has anyone come forward
to identify him or herself as the driver.
• Given that this all took place before cell phones, arranging a ride home would not
have been easy. Indeed, she stated that she ran out of the house after coming
downstairs and did not state that she made a phone call from the house before she
did, or that she called anyone else thereafter.
Although Mitchell is circumspect, the answer is clear -- it's a tale that doesn't add up. There's a lot more to read, including the frankly bizarre memory lapses that surround Ford's interactions with the Washington Post and with the Democrats who greased the skids.

2 comments:

Gino said...

nice report and all that should raise a few questions... but question require thought and debate.
we are dealing with a quest for power at almost all cost. the tools are not debate, but rage, hysteria, character attacks and mob violence.

unless we change our thinking, and stop relying on cute reports, we will lose this war. make them fear us, for real. ruin some lives.

Bike Bubba said...

Good report, and it agrees with my view--no good prosecutor would ever go forward with what we've seen--but I think the world we're living in is one where good prosecutors are increasingly absent. Instead, the mantra I'm seeing is that too many are saying "I believe you" to the point they don't seem to be heeding contrary evidence. At some point, we need to make sure it bites them on the a**, and hard, so they remember not to try that stunt again. When someone plays the Nifong, give them the Nifong.

And if the local DA doesn't prosecute perjurers, time to run him out of town and get a new DA. As I noted on my site, 2-10% of complaints being found false means that you've got 1-5x as many perjurers as you do rapists put in jail. It's a big problem.