I was on the Randy Tobler Radio Show on NewsTalk 917.1 in St. Louis, MO to discuss the Kavanaugh investigation.
I would be a lot more worried if I were Dr. Ford because she is also going to have to be questioned and all of the details of her story are going to be investigated. We saw so many inconsistencies in her testimony on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee compared to many other statements that she had given in the letter to her congressional representative and in the information she gave to the Washington Post, so this is fraught with peril. I think this is just part of an entire effort to delay, otherwise Senator Feinstein would have released this information six weeks before the day that it was actually released. More importantly, this allegation would have been discussed with Judge Kavanaugh either during the 32 hours of public testimony that he had before the allegation was publicized or during the many private meetings that he had with various Senators including Senator Feinstein and through all of the written questions that he answered as well. So you have seen that the Senate Democrats have decided that their strategy to obstruct and delay, and they have been successful at that.
Re Prosecutor Mitchell’s questioning of Dr. Ford: She was supposed to be independent. That’s why the Senate Republicans decided to give their time to her because they wanted it to be like a good investigation. At this point the Senate Judiciary Committee took on the role of the investigatory body and they had Miss Mitchell there to ask questions. She poked many holes in Dr. Ford’s testimony. There was probably no Perry Mason moment but that’s not how our system of justice is supposed to work. I understand that people wanted more revelations or more drama and given the hyper attention to this entire process and the salacious allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, that is a completely reasonable expectation, but from a legal perspective what she did was very good because it was very methodical and it poked holes in the credibility of Dr. Ford related to these claims.
Rachel Mitchell Memo Lists ‘Weaknesses’ in Ford Claim: READ
I think there are two things on the ‘poking of the holes.’ The one is the supposedly being scared of flying, and I think I don’t know if people noticed this or not but Dr. Ford also said that she didn’t understand that the Senate Judiciary Committee would fly out to California to interview her. She genuinely seemed like she had never heard that before so that should definitely be investigated because that is evidence towards the idea that they wanted a delay. Her team of lawyers and the Senate Democrats–and this is a key point that came out in the testimony too–that Senator Feinstein’s office referred Dr. Ford to one of the lawyers that she engaged. That doesn’t seem independent to me.
Also on the poking the holes in Dr. Ford’s story about these specific allegations: when she was asked questions about the polygraph test which happened I think about a month-and-a-half ago, she couldn’t remember details about that. And yet she’s asking the American people to believe that she can remember things that happened 36 years ago. We don’t have the where that her allegation happened, we don’t have the when the allegation happened, so we do have the who were there allegation and none of the people that she in particular named said that they had any recollection of this this allegation actually occurring and Judge Kavanaugh denied it 100%.
I think it’s very important though to not wipe away anything generally about these allegations because the question is whether these specific allegations made by Dr. Ford are true. You have to look at the facts and the evidence. When you look at the weak facts and the weak evidence backing up Dr. Ford’s specific claims, not talking about her credibility as a person, just talking about her credibility on these claims, you have to see how weak that is and then put that against the voluminous evidence of Judge Kavanaugh’s good character. The six background checks that he went through–25 years worth of public service–including higher level than top security clearance and not even a hint of anything like these allegations.
I think most importantly when you asked the question about being a woman, he has so many women, hundreds of women from when he was in high school, when he was in college law school, when he was a lawyer with the Bush Administration, when he’s been a judge for 12 years, he has women who are willing to go out there and put their names on the public what record, even during this extremely hostile environment when people are getting death threats from partisans. You understand that the balance of his record, the voluminous weight of all these women throughout his entire life what a man of good character he is, he has top integrity, add that to his preeminent legal qualifications and I think any fair-minded person would give Judge Kavanaugh a pass plus for the weakness of the allegations by Dr. Ford, not even talking about the other allegations which are, as he said in the hearings a joke, particularly in light of his excellent character reputation for his entire life.
I couldn’t put it better than Judge Kavanaugh when he made two points in his hearing. One he talked about how it’s a search and destroy mission by the Senate Democrats of Judge Kavanaugh. I think the most important point is that he showed a different response to it. He talked about how his 10 year old daughter–and I choked up listening to this during the hearing and I was trying to be very dispassionate–but he talked about his 10 year old daughter the night before the hearings saying, can we pray for the woman, Dr. Ford? I think that is the response that is a beautiful thing to when you are paid with calumny and vicious slandered allegations, you respond wishing well to the other person and praying for them. How much better can we hope for than that response is our society going forward rather than the search and destroy mission that we saw the last two weeks?
