RUTHFULLY YOURS

“I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me.” Christine Blasey Ford testified Thursday. “He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was so drunk, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under my clothes. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me. Both Brett and Mark were drunkenly laughing during the attack.” And so on.

Dr. Ford described herself as “a fiercely independent person and I am no one’s pawn.” Yet, since she accused Kavanaugh it has become clear that she is a partisan, activist Democrat. Ford was flanked by attorney Debra Katz, a partisan Democrat who defended Bill Clinton, not the women who accused him, and Michael Bromwich, a POTUS 44 appointee who also served as an attorney for fired FBI boss Andrew McCabe.

In testimony it emerged that Dr. Ford had sent her letter to Dianne Feinstein, not to both Republicans and Democrats on the judiciary committee. That is what one would expect if Ford’s action was simple “civic duty,” as the professor has proclaimed, and not part of an attempt to smear Kavanaugh and block him from the high court.

Ford was well cast as an ingenue and professional victim, clad in blue like Anita Hill, as ranking member Feinstein noted. In effect, the accuser served as her own expert witness, speaking of the brain’s “hippocampus” and explaining “the etiology of PTSD is multifactoral.” Yet despite her ease with psycho-medical jargon, the professor was shaky about her handlers, the polygraph, and many other details. The professor even told the committee she did not know what “exculpatory evidence” is. So at times, as Joseph diGenova predicted, she did “look like the loon she is.”

As judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox News, the questions from prosecutor Rachel Mitchell wound up helping the accuser. Mitchell meandered and wasted time with maps and questions about air travel.

Dr. Ford claimed she was “100 percent certain it was Kavanaugh” who attacked her back in the summer of 1982. Under questioning from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Dr. Ford revealed that the vaunted 2012 therapy session when her husband recalled that she used Kavanaugh’s name was “quibbling over a remodel” of their house. When Klobuchar asked Ford what she most remembered about the attack she mentioned the stairwell, the bedroom, the bed to the right and “the laughter, the uproarious laughter.” But at that point, Ford did not mention Brett Kavanaugh.

Mitchell eventually got around to the four people Ford said were at the party but who have issued statements that they have no memory of the event. Ford said that one of them, her friend Leland Ingham (now Keyser) faced “significant health challenges” and was getting treatment. So the professor implied that her friend was somehow mistaken. And Ford could not name the place and time of the attack, who owned the residence, or how she got there.

In his testimony, Kavanaugh said that Keyser does not know him and has no recollection of the party, with or without Ford. The nominee said he and his family had been destroyed by vicious accusations and the committee had “replaced advise and consent with search and destroy.”

In highly charged testimony, the judge decried “a long series of last-minute smears. Crazy stuff. All nonsense.” It was a “calculated and orchestrated political hit,” fueled by Democrats’ anger over President Trump and the 2016 election. “This is a circus,” Kavanaugh said, “a grotesque and coordinated character assassination.”

The judge found “no corroboration” and the accusation was “refuted by people allegedly there.” After six FBI investigations over 26 years, nothing of the kind had surfaced. After detailing that summer with a calendar he had kept, and charting the damage done to his family and friends, Kavanaugh told the committee “I am innocent of this charge” and that he was “not going to quit. Ever!”

Democrats continued to hammer Kavanaugh and the most loathsome was probably Dianne Feinstein, impresario of this sleaze show, who failed to mention Ford’s accusation in her session with the nominee. Feinstein faced stiff competition from Cory Booker, who has called Kavanaugh “evil,” and Mazie Hirono, who believes that accusation equals guilt. Vietnam veteran impersonator Richard Blumenthal asked Kavanaugh, “Do you believe Anita Hill?”

Democrats tried to pressure Kavanaugh into demanding another FBI investigation. As Joseph diGenova said before the hearing, the FBI has nothing to investigate. In America, as several Republicans noted, the burden of proof is on the accuser.

Professor Ford failed to prove her accusation and the hearing confirmed Democrats’ “big fat con job” cited by President Trump. Kavanaugh did not need to prove anything, but his statement, as powerful as that of Clarence Thomas in 1991, and the recitation of his record, did confirm that Trump had made a wise choice.

At this writing, it was unclear whether the Republicans would hold a committee vote on Friday or how they would vote on the nominee. As the president says, we’ll see what happens.