RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/video/hillary-clinton-says-kavanaugh-self-defense-is-a-denial-of-the-legitimacy-of-womens-stories/

On Tuesday at The Atlantic fest, Hillary Clinton laughed at President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. She attacked him as “unconvincing” and lacking “judicial temperament,” but praised Christine Blasey Ford — the woman who accused him of sexual assault — as “credible,” despite her story’s many holes and inconsistencies. She also praised the two women who angrily accosted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) last Friday.

Why did she so vigorously defend the accusers and dismiss the accused? It seemed to boil down to one statement — made about then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas — that a man defending himself against sexual assault accusations “very much felt like — and in fact it probably was — the denial of the legitimacy of women’s stories” (emphasis added).

If any innocent man’s defense against allegations of sexual assault constitutes “the denial of the legitimacy of women’s stories,” then no man ever can defend himself against a false accusation.

Clinton framed her views on the issue in terms of women triumphing over a long tradition of patriarchy. She claimed the modern movement against sexual assault is “finally righting the balance, because there’s been a tremendous imbalance on women’s lives, women’s narratives. They’ve been historically dismissed, condescended to.”

The former presidential candidate argued that women in politics “find themselves picked apart, second-guessed, held to a double standard. We want to have as much right to our agency, to our autonomy, as we should be able to have, where women’s lives are valued as much as men’s lives, their stories are as important as men’s stories, they are written into history, not out of history. So that’s what I see happening.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The unquestioned conventional wisdom in Washington these days is that suburban female voters will overwhelmingly reject Republicans in November elections and that the controversy over Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be a contributing factor. But perhaps many of these voters would first like to know what happened to two particular suburban females in the 1980s.

It won’t be easy to find out, because most professional journalists seem to have lost interest in trying to ascertain whether Professor Christine Blasey Ford’s compelling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was accurate. Judging by recent coverage, much of the press corps is now endlessly fascinated by demands for a broader investigation of her allegation of attempted rape by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh but largely uninterested in the emerging evidence.

For example, most reporters don’t seem to have noticed that the woman who was the other teenage girl allegedly attending the party described by Professor Ford still isn’t backing her story. CBS News mentioned in the fifth paragraph of a story last night:

An attorney who represents Leland Keyser, who Ford said was at the house that night, told CBS News Keyser met with the FBI on Saturday. Through the attorney, Howard Walsh, Keyser has said she does not refute Ford’s account but that she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where Kavanaugh was present, with or without Ford.

Today Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reports:

Leland Keyser, the high school friend Christine Blasey Ford counted on to corroborate her sexual assault charges, has told the FBI she has no knowledge of the supposed 1982 party or the accused, Brett Kavanaugh.

Howard J. Walsh III, her attorney, told The Washington Times that she met with the FBI on Saturday.

Asked if she had repeated the same two statements she provided the Senate Judiciary Committee, the lawyer answered, “yes.”

Sex-crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell reported to Republican senators on the inconsistencies in the evolving story from Professor Ford and specifically noted two statements that her lifelong friend provided to the Judiciary 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.”

Ms. Mitchell also noted another relevant part of the professor’s testimony:

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.

Professor Ford has reasonably made the argument that being assaulted would have made the evening much more memorable to her than to anyone else. But she’s also describing a chain of events that ought to have made an impression upon her friend. Perhaps the FBI is now exploring why a 15-year-old Leland Keyser, surprised to learn that she was the only girl at a party with older boys, would not have asked her friend at some point why she left without a word. It’s important to emphasize here that this is not a question of whether Ms. Keyser would remember such communication more than three decades later. Professor Ford testified that such communication never occurred.

One could argue that given that Ms. Keyser’s story hasn’t changed since her statements delivered by her lawyer to the committee, this is not news. But the whole premise of the new government investigation is that such statements are insufficient and that witnesses must be interviewed by FBI agents.

There is also of course an argument in this era that those alleging sexual assault should be believed, but Professor Ford will have difficulty arguing at this point that her account should not be questioned. That’s because her legal team has repeatedly demanded that she be questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Perhaps raising again the issue of whose interests her attorneys are really serving, the Ford team has been public in its call for further examination of the events she’s described. “NEW: FBI has not responded to requests from Christine Blasey Ford to do an interview. “We have not heard from the FBI, despite repeated efforts to speak with them,” her lawyer, Debra S. Katz, told me, when asked,” tweeted New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg on Sunday.

Whatever the government does, there seems to be a job here for reporters as well in trying to discover more facts about what did or did not happen in a house in suburban Maryland in the 1980s. But good luck getting the press corps to focus on the alleged sexual assault when reporters are on the hunt for evidence of drunken ice-tossing.

The bet here is that suburban women, just like people in every other demographic group, want evidence to evaluate the Ford claim.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/02/61-questions-the-fbi-should-ask-about-christine-blasey-fords-story/

I am a former prosecutor, a father of three daughters, a brother to five sisters. I’ve drawn up a list of questions relevant to the FBI investigation of Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Several, including the first ones, are for the FBI to answer. The rest are for the FBI to ask of Ford and others, including her parents and her siblings. The FBI may not read this, of course, but it may help you assess the FBI’s work and Ford’s credibility. It can be difficult for any of us to remember an incident. And our memories can play tricks. As an examiner, all we can do is try to help the alleged witness remember what happened, with all five senses and the accompanying emotions.

I number these for reference. I have sought to avoid including any questions that appeared to have been answered already.

I won’t address why I’ve included each question, but let me describe the two groupings of questions.

First, there are a few questions on Ford’s knowledge of national current affairs and of Washington, D.C., affairs, and on her knowledge of Kavanaugh’s career. It may be that because she lives on the West Coast and works in a field unrelated to history, current events, journalism, law, and government, Ford may have been totally oblivious to Kavanaugh’s career. Until we know the answers to those questions, we don’t know. But a good prosecutor could line up one detail after another, and raise suspicions about why, after all of the national notoriety Kavanaugh received, especially after his nomination to the D.C. Circuit (that lasted three years), she raised no allegation against him before his nomination to the Supreme Court.

Second, there are questions about who knew Ford was leaving the gathering on the first floor to go upstairs. It is not likely that two boys lay in wait on the second floor for her. So they must have gone up the stairs behind her, so close behind her that she didn’t have enough time to get to the bathroom. Not just one boy, but two. And neither of them lived in that house. And she didn’t notice, or hear, that? And no one else noticed this oddity either?