The next time you hear liberal Democrats talking about how much they care about the rights and wishes of victims and the oppressed, think about what some of them connected to a prominent Democratic U.S. senator did to a woman now accusing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her about 36 years ago when they were teen-agers.
The woman asked for confidentiality and anonymity. That’s what U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the only member of the committee who had the letter, gave her. But then someone (or some-ones) informed other Democrats on the committee about the letter, and eventually leaked it (or at least key contents of it) to various reporters.
If you follow the bouncing ball in the Washington Post story on Sunday about the woman, reporters started showing up at her home and place of work asking her to go public. The Intercept, The New Yorker, and Buzz Feed are mentioned in the story specifically.
This is what reporters do. But why were they able to do it?
Because this woman’s identity recently became widely known around Washington – directly against her stated wishes.
Why?
Most likely because a person or persons on Feinstein’s staff or the (Democratic) staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee leaked the letter.
Why?
Because they care more about trying to keep abortion legal everywhere for any reason than they do about the wishes of a woman whom they supposedly believe is a victim of sexual assault.
If you want to make progress, you have to break a few victims.
And why did this putative victim not want to make her name public?
Here’s what the Washington Post story says about the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford:
“By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. ‘Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?’ she said.”
And why was she worried about “annihilation”?
Because she has no way to prove her story.
It’s a classic he said/she said, but with a twist. If we are to believe Ford’s account, Kavanaugh was “stumbling drunk” at a teens-only summertime party when he assaulted her.
In other words: He was (allegedly) so drunk there’s a good chance he wouldn’t remember what happened.
The only other witness, Ford says, was Kavanaugh’s high school friend Mark Judge, who was also, she said, “stumbling drunk.”
Kavanaugh denies it happened. Judge denies it happened. Ford says she never told anyone at the time. (Or ever, until 2012, about 30 years later.)
In other words: Ford has zero corroboration.
Can you imagine the follow-up questioning of Judge Kavanaugh next week from the Senate Judiciary Committee?
“Judge, did you ever get drunk in high school to the point where you couldn’t remember anything?”
“Senator, if I did I don’t recall.”
Now, we’re not interested in tearing Ford down. Just as she can’t prove her story, we can’t disprove it. Nor are we accusing her of making up this ugly story. How can we know for sure?
And like many Americans, we’ll be paying attention to what she says under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, if she does indeed appear as expected.
But it’s interesting to imagine the possibilities.
For one, a web site called Pacific Pundit reports that Brett Kavanaugh’s mother, Martha Kavanaugh, was the judge in state district court in Maryland for a foreclosure case concerning the accuser’s parents in 1996. The commentary on the web site suggests revenge as a motive for the accuser.
Seems like a reach. But it also suggests the Kavanaugh family may have been on the accuser’s mind well before she first described to a therapist in 2012 a disturbing incident from her adolescence involving two teen-age boys. (Or was that four teen-age boys, as the therapist’s notes suggest?)
Is it possible that the incident actually happened, but that she has identified the wrong person as the attacker?
Seems plausible, given the lack of specificity in her memory about the event — which isn’t unusual in cases of severe trauma.
Not convinced?
Let’s imagine instead that Christine Blasey Ford presents as a sympathetic and compelling witness. And let’s imagine that Brett Kavanaugh’s response is a forceful and persuasive total denial.
What then?
The usual investigative technique in such cases is to see if there are other instances that suggest a pattern of bad behavior that shores up the credibility of individual accusations.
So far, there are none. Kavanaugh has issued a blanket denial: “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes – to her or to anyone.”
That’s a challenge to accusers and dirt-diggers everywhere: Find another instance.
If none comes forward, it’s impossible to deny Kavanaugh confirmation on the basis of this accusation.
Here’s why:
Imagine the following scenario. A political partisan (as Ford appears to be) desperate to preserve a peculiar political agenda makes up a damaging, unproven, and unrefutable accusation against a political nominee she despises. Her only evidence is her own word, and she’s hoping she can somehow sink the nominee anonymously by telling her story to someone with influence who can somehow use the information to undercut him. Events get out of her control, and she’s forced to go public with her tall tale – and to stand by it and repeat it under oath, or else lose all credibility not only for her accusation but in her regular life.
We’re not suggesting Ford did that here. But someone could.
No one should be allowed on that basis to sink a person’s reputation and aspirations.
Ford’s claims about Kavanaugh are not analogous to the Roy Moore situation last year. In that case, large numbers of women, some with corroborating evidence, came forward on the record to make ugly accusations against Moore that were plausible and sounded similar to what other women whom they didn’t know were saying around the same time. It was impossible to dismiss their claims, which is why Moore lost the U.S. Senate election in Alabama.
But that’s not the case here.
And in the absence of corroboration for Ford’s claims, and in the absence of a single other plausible accusation against Kavanaugh, Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh can’t stand.
It’s reasonable for the Senate Judiciary Committee to make further inquiries. But if no other shoes drop, Kavanaugh should be confirmed, in short order.
And if he’s innocent of these unproven charges, he can spend the rest of his days uttering Reagan cabinet member Ray Donovan’s famous line:
“Which office do I go to to get my reputation back”?
Brett Kavanaugh 
