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Oct. 1, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:01
4213 RACHEL MITCHELL BOMBSHELL REPORT ON DR. FORD
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A refusal to see another person's point of view is very often the end of the relationship.
And I really do want people who are Democrats to understand what it looks like for Republicans, this whole Kavanaugh hearing stuff.
And we'll just talk about Blasey Ford for the moment.
So I want you to imagine that somebody who is a hero, a genuine hero of yours, Barack Obama, say, in 2008...
Right before the election, right before the election that put him in the White House, a bunch of very Republican women accused him of sexual misconduct in some unspecified past time where there were no corroborating witnesses and so on.
What would you think of that?
What would you think of that as An honest expression of outraged violation.
Would you think of it that way or would you think of it as a very cheap, destructive and cynical political ploy to keep Barack Obama out of the White House?
Imagine that they couldn't, like the women who were accusing Barack Obama couldn't really nail down a time or a place or anything like that, even down to the year often.
And imagine that the first accuser of Barack Obama who says, Barack Obama did sexual assault on me many, many decades ago.
Imagine that that Republican woman had put forward a number of witnesses, and those witnesses had all categorically denied any knowledge of what had happened, even those she claimed were there at the time of the attack.
Can you imagine how you would feel or what you would think about such last-minute accusations against a genuine political hero of yours?
And if you understand or at least can appreciate how you would feel if one of your heroes was being attacked in this kind of way, I think it goes a long way to helping to bridge the divide, if such a thing is possible, between the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States.
And if we can do that, or if you, it's not really up to me, if you can do that, then I think we can start finding ways to find common ground.
Because this polarization, historically, in countries, has only ever ended one way.
So please, please, for the sake of that, try to reach out.
Try to understand what the Republicans are going through and what their perspective is.
Because you know as well as I do that if it was your hero in the spotlights, you'd feel exactly the same way.
So a memorandum just came out to all Republican senators from Rachel Mitchell Who was the investigative counsel for the United States Senate Committee.
This just came out September 30th, 2018.
So this is an analysis of Dr.
Christine Blasey Ford's allegations.
And this is very, very important because it does contain a very experienced prosecutor's View on what Blasey Ford said.
As she points out here, I'll read some excerpts from it.
This memorandum contains my own independent assessment of Dr.
Ford's allegations based upon my independent review of the evidence and my nearly 25 years of experience as a career prosecutor of sex-related and other crimes in Arizona.
So, she is a registered Republican.
She's not a political or partisan person.
That's important to understand.
And a Senate confirmation hearing is not a trial, especially not a prosecution.
So people will, when they hear about these kinds of responses, they will say, well, it's not a trial.
And that's true.
But the matters being discussed are criminal, are criminal.
This would be a sexual assault or some variation thereof, if what Kavanaugh did to Blasey Ford actually happened.
There would be criminal standards of proof, which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, 95 plus percent, and so on.
So she says, there is no clear standard of proof for allegations made during the Senate's confirmation process, but the world in which I work is the legal world, not the political world.
So she's giving a legal view.
And here's the summation.
In the legal context, here is my bottom line, a he said, she said case is incredibly difficult to prove, but this case is even weaker than that.
Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them.
For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the committee, nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance of the evidence standard.
Which is, what, 51% or whatever?
That's, I think, more common in civil cases.
So why? She says, 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 30th letter to Senator Feinstein, she said it happened in the early 1980.
So this could be a three to four year gap.
So she has a three to four year gap when she says the alleged assault occurred.
And this was in the same month, a couple of weeks apart, she has a three to four or two to three to four year gap.
Her August 7th statement to the polygrapher, this is the guy who did her lie detector test, said that it happened one high school summer in early 80s, but she crossed out the word early for reasons she did not explain.
So here we have mid-1980s July 6 text to the Washington Post.
July 30th letter to Senator Feinstein, she said, early 1980s.
August 7th, a week or so later, high school summer in early 80s.
But she crossed out the word early.
A September 16th Washington Post article reported that Dr.
Ford said it happened in the summer of 1982.
So that is becoming quite specific.
Mid-1980s, early 1980s, and then less than a month later, she has it narrowed down to the season and the year.
Well, what happened between July 6th and September 16th?
How on earth did she get this narrowed down?
Mitchell goes on to say, similarly, the September 16th article reported that notes from an individual therapy session in 2013 showed 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.
Right, so this is very important.
If it's in her late teens, 15 of course would be mid-teens, if it occurred in her late teens, then the whole timeline goes off.
It can't be the summer of 1982 and so on.
So the prosecutor goes on to say, while it is common for victims to be uncertain about dates, Dr.
Ford failed to explain how she was suddenly able to narrow the time frame to a particular season and a particular year.
So that's one. That's not good.
And it's not good on so many levels because this is not, I have been consistently uncertain about what happened 35 to 38 years ago, but she has been inconsistently certain about the events just over the past month or two.
So the next issue that the prosecutor identifies, 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 this point, Judge Kavanaugh's name was widely reported in the press as a potential Supreme Court nominee if Governor Romney won the presidential election.
So... And there's...
Someone was saying that it wasn't widely reported and other people did a Google search and it was.
It was widely reported. So, if the only time the name starts to float up is when the guy might be a Supreme Court nominee, that's not good.
In any event, says the prosecutor, it took Dr.
Ford over 30 years to name her assailant.
Delayed disclosure of abuse is common, so this is not dispositive.
That doesn't mean you dismiss the whole thing, but it's a long time.
When speaking, next point from the prosecutor, 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.
Now, physical abuse and sexual abuse, obviously two very, very different And to describe it, again, in the space of a couple of weeks or a month or two, to describe it as either a sexual assault or a physical abuse incident is very, very different. Dr.
Ford, says the prosecutor, 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.
Perhaps most importantly, and I talked about this some time ago, perhaps most importantly, says the prosecutor, she does not remember how she got from the party back to her house.
This is foundational.
This is foundational. In the suburbs in the early 1980s, There were no cabs.
There were no cell phones.
There were very few, if any, pay phones.
Maybe there'd be one at a gas station or maybe there'd be one if there was a convenience store or something, but it was just not around.
And a lot of times the cabs would simply refuse to come out to the suburbs because they'd spent more time in gas getting out there, but it could take a long time.
So how do you get out of The house where you claim this sexual assault took place.
You run downstairs.
How do you get home?
If you walk, you'd remember that, obviously.
If somebody from the party offered to take you home, it would be because you were distraught and upset and they would ask and they would remember that and you would remember who it was and they could be questioned and all this kind of stuff.
If you stayed to call a cab with the two alleged attackers standing there laughing uproariously, as she says, in the room, you'd remember that.
Waiting for the cab to come, you'd be tortured by that, you'd remember that.
So how do you get from the party back to your house?
This is very significant.
Prosecutor says 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 seven miles from her childhood home as the crow flies.
And she testified that it was a roughly 20-minute drive from her childhood home.
That is a long way.
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.
Now that's important because if you're going to remember all the other people who were at the party, wouldn't you remember the identity of the person who actually saved you?
Because that would be a very difficult situation to say, I desperately want to leave this party because I say I've been attacked and sexually assaulted.
The person, of course, would know that you were upset, would ask what happened and so on.
And the first cell phones were really, really expensive, came out in the mid-80s.
The prosecutor says, 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.
Now, it doesn't seem to be that she would have called her parents because she didn't want her parents to know that she was at a...
A party with boys and was drinking alcohol and so on.
Prosecutor says she does, however, remember small distinct details from the party unrelated to the assault.
For example, she testified that she had exactly one beer at the party and was taking no medication at the time of the alleged assault.
Now that's not good.
That's not good. Because if you don't even remember who saved you from this alleged assault, but you remember exactly that you had one beer, and you remember exactly that you were taking no medication at the time of the alleged assault.
No cold medication, no antihistamines, no other allergy issues, no antibiotics, no nothing, right?
Come on. Do you remember if you were taking any medication 38 years ago?
I don't know. The prosecutor goes on, Dr.
Ford's account of the alleged assault has not been corroborated by anyone she identified as having attended, including her lifelong friend.
Dr. Ford has named three people other than Judge Kavanaugh who attended the party, Mark Judge, Patrick P.J. Smith, And her lifelong friend, Leland Kaiser, nay Ingham, Dr.
Ford testified to the committee that another boy attended the party, but that she could not remember his name.
No others have come forward.
This friend of hers, Leland, well, Leland says she never met Kavanaugh and so on, but talk about throwing someone under the bus, which is that when she was asked, why has Leland not affirmed you, it's like, oh, she's unwell, she's got health issues.
My goodness, cold, man.
The prosecutor goes on, all three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the committee denying any memory of the party whatsoever.
Most relevantly, in her first statement to the committee, Ms.
Kaiser, her lifelong friend, stated through counsel that, quote, simply put, Ms.
Kaiser 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.
Keiser 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.
Moreover, 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.
That's important. I've said this before, it's really important to understand.
First of all, at that age, girls will often go to the bathroom in pairs for reasons of past male understanding.
But you're at a party, and it's not really a party.
It's like a gathering, because there's just a couple of people there.
Your friend goes upstairs.
She is gone for a long time.
Two boys go upstairs.
The music gets cranked up.
There's crashing and thumping as they go piling off the bed, according to the story.
The boys come laughing harshly, giggling and come crashing down the stairs.
Your friend is gone. Like, at what point would you go up and find out what the hell happened to your friend?
It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
The fact that the music was playing upstairs.
There's no such thing as a gathering or a party where somebody wants music and they put it on in an upstairs bedroom quietly with the door closed.
Crazy. Did anyone turn down the music?
How did she get out of the door? Anyway.
And of course, Dr.
Ford, at the age of 15, claims to have been sexually assaulted, runs out of the house and does not say to her friend, you've got to get out of here.
You know, like, we've got to go.
You can just make up something. I'm feeling unwell.
I'm having allergic reaction.
I've got a headache. I've got a stomachache.
I just threw up and we've got to get out.
And then you say, I just got attacked.
You know, I mean, you don't leave your friend behind.
Drinking with these drunken attackers, right?
That's funny, too. I mean, all of these horror about the fact that a teenage boy would have some beers.
You know, Obama did admit to doing cocaine in college, right?
You know that, right? Everybody was fine with that.
So, the prosecutor goes on to say, Dr.
Ford has not offered a consistent account of the alleged assault.
According to her letter to Senator Feinstein, Dr.
Ford heard Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge talking to other partygoers downstairs while she was hiding in the bathroom after the alleged assault, but according to her testimony, she could not hear them talking to anyone.
Now, this is an important point.
So, when Dr.
Ford claims she's being attacked, the music had turned up so high that people could not hear her, I assume, crying out or screaming out very loudly.
The music had been turned up in order to muffle or drown out.
Now, a 15-year-old girl's scream is kind of piercing.
Wait, I sound like I'm saying that from experience, but it's going to be loud.
Like if a woman at any age really wants to make herself heard because she's being attacked, she's going to make herself heard.
And so the music had to be loud enough to drown out a woman's scream, a girl's scream.
But then she says that she can hear the other partygoers downstairs talking.
But if the music is so loud that it's supposed to drown out, A girl's scream, then how on earth would the music not also, like you've got a locked door, you've got music, how on earth would it not drown out what's going on downstairs?
It's just a question that I guess I would have.
The prosecutor goes on to say, in her letter, she stated, I locked the door behind me.
Both loudly stumbled down the stairwell, at which point other persons at the house were talking with them.
She testified that Judge Kavanaugh, or Mark Judge turned up the music in the bedroom so that the people downstairs could not hear her scream.
She testified that after the incident, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and heard them going downstairs.
But she maintained that she could not hear their conversation with others when they got downstairs.
Instead, she testified that she assumed a conversation took place, right?
So she says that she heard them having a conversation downstairs, went further questions.
She said, well, I assumed a conversation was taking place.
That's significant, right?
That's significant. The prosecutor continues, her account of who was at the party has been inconsistent.
According to the Washington Post's account of her therapy notes, there were four boys in the bedroom in which she was assaulted.
Four boys in the bedroom in which she was assaulted.
Now, given the number of people at the party, I don't really see how that's particularly possible.
And of course, if your friend goes upstairs to use the bathroom and then all the boys go storming up the stairs, the music gets cranked up, I mean, of course you'd go up because you'd be concerned, right?
It's your friend. The prosecutor continues, she told the Washington Post that the notes were erroneous because there were four boys at the party, but only two in the bedroom.
So, there's some confusion about this, at least for me, because Dr.
Ford says, I can't recall if she showed a summary of her therapist's notes to the Washington Post reporter or showed portions of her therapist's notes to the Washington Post reporter and so on.
So, that's kind of important.
So, Yeah.
Notes are erroneous. Four boys at the party, only two in the bedroom.
In her letter to Senator Feinstein, she said, me and four others were present at the parties.
In her testimony, she said that there were four boys in addition to Leland, Kaiser, and herself.
She could not remember the name of the fourth boy, and no one has come forward.
Dr. Ford listed Patrick P.J. Smith as a bystander in her statement to the polygrapher and in her July 6 text to the Washington Post, although she testified that it was inaccurate to call him a bystander.
So a bystander, I think, means that you're present in the room but not participating, which, you know, makes you an accessory, I suppose.
She did not list, says the prosecutor, she did not list Leland Kaiser even though they are good friends.
Leland Kaiser's presence should have been more memorable than P.J. Smith's, right?
So if your lifelong friend is there and you forget to mention him, that seems important.
And saying that someone is a bystander or witnessing a crime and doing nothing to prevent it or report it puts them in a very bad if not downright criminal light and getting something like that wrong.
You see, you understand that this is a false accusation of, to my understanding, criminal activity, right?
So when she says Patrick P.J. Smith was a bystander, in other words, that he was watching this occur, Well, she's accusing him of criminal activity, as far as I understand it, and then she withdrew that.
So you see, we have a false accusation of criminal activity even in the testimony.
Or at least in the events leading up to the testimony.
The prosecutor continues, Dr.
Ford has struggled to recall important recent events relating to her allegations, and her testimony regarding recent events raises further questions about her memory.
Dr. Ford, she says, struggled to remember her interactions with the Washington Post.
Dr. Ford could not remember if she showed a full or partial set of therapy notes to the Washington Post reporter.
She does not remember, says the prosecutor, whether she showed the Post reporter the therapist's notes or her own summary of those notes.
The Washington Post article says that portions of her therapist's notes were provided by Ford and reviewed by the Post.
But in her testimony, Dr.
Ford could not recall whether she summarized the notes for the reporter or showed her the actual records.
Now that's very important because if Dr.
Ford summarized the notes but left in the error that she says the therapist made that says there were four boys in the room, then Dr.
Ford summarized something that she knew was incorrect but provided it anyway.
So that's not good.
Prosecutor continues, she does not remember if she actually had a copy of the notes when she texted the Washington Post WhatsApp account on July 6th.
Dr. Ford said in her first WhatsApp message to the Post that she, quote, had therapy notes talking about, end quote, the incident when she contacted the Post's tip line.
She testified that she had reviewed her therapy notes before contacting the Post to determine whether they should be they mentioned anything about the alleged incident but could not remember if she had a copy of those notes as she said in her WhatsApp message or merely reviewed them in her therapist's office.
That's, again, the therapist's notes are very key to support the allegations of Dr.
Ford. She's not sure where she reviewed them.
She's not sure if she had a copy of them.
She's not sure if she passed along the actual notes or her own summary of them, which is kind of important because it becomes more like, I guess, not exactly hearsay, but it's a rewrite.
Dr. Ford refused to provide any of her therapy notes to the committee.
Now, that is just plain terrible.
If you're waving around your therapist's notes because they are a confirmation of the accusations of criminal behavior that you're making, but you refuse to provide any of the therapy notes to the committee, I mean, that's just plain terrible.
I mean, on any conceivable level.
Dr. Ford's explanation of why she disclosed her allegations the way she did raises questions.
The prosecutor says, she claimed originally that she wished for her story to remain confidential, but the person operating the tip line at the Washington Post was the first person other than her therapist or husband to whom she disclosed the identity of her alleged attacker.
She testified that she had a, quote, sense of urgency to relay the information to the Senate and the President, end quote.
She did not contact the Senate, however, because she claims she, quote, did not know how to do that, end quote.
She does not explain why she knew how to contact her Congresswoman but not her Senator.
So, this is a woman with two master's degrees with a PhD.
She's a professional, she's intelligent, and she has no idea how to contact the Senate.
She can't just type in contact the Senate in a search engine and then just phone.
I mean, come on.
If you wish to remain confidential, why are you talking to the Washington Post first?
Why would you choose the Washington Post?
Why? I mean, the Washington Post is notoriously a far-left newspaper.
Why would you choose the Washington Post?
That seems to me partisan at the beginning.
Dr. Ford could not remember if she was being audio or video recorded when she took the polygraph, and she could not remember whether the polygraph occurred the same day as her grandmother's funeral or the day after her grandmother's funeral.
It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to somebody who was grieving.
Ah, the polygraph to me.
I mean, the American Psychological Association specifically denies that polygraphs are valid, and she would know that, so why she would take a polygraph with two unspecified questions while she was upset, I mean, it's all nonsense.
It's all absolute horrible nonsense.
So, the prosecutor continues Dr.
Ford's description of the psychological impact of the event raises questions.
She maintains that she suffers from anxiety, claustrophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Now this, I mean, we've talked about this.
I believe I can't fly.
The date of the hearing was delayed because the committee was informed that her symptoms prevent her from flying.
Prevent her from flying.
From flying. Prevent. Got it.
Prevent her from flying. But she agreed during her testimony that she flies, quote, fairly frequently for her hobbies and work, end quote.
She flies to the Mid-Atlantic at least once a year to visit her family.
She has flown to Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Costa Rica.
She also flew to Washington, D.C. for the hearing.
I can't come because I'm too anxious.
I have too many mental problems to fly, but I fly all the time.
Come on. False in one thing, false in everything.
The prosecutor continues, note too that her attorneys refused a private hearing or interview.
Dr. Ford testified that she was not clear on whether investigators were willing to travel to California to interview her.
It therefore is not clear that her attorneys ever communicated Chairman Grassley's offer to send investigators to meet her in California or wherever she wanted to meet to conduct the interview.
Now, can you imagine this woman, Mitchell, who's, you know, in my mind, very skilled and sharp as a tack.
Can you imagine this woman, Mitchell, having an hour or two with Dr.
Ford? In private, right?
And the notes would then be released and so on.
You could see what she did even with this intermittent bungee-in, bungee-out stuff during the actual committee hearing.
But can you imagine if she'd had a chance to really, really cross-examine Dr.
Ford? Well, that's of course why They wanted it delayed for more, I assume, for more accusations to come forward and they wanted it delayed so that the questioning could occur in this kind of environment rather than in something private.
The prosecutor continues, she alleges that she struggled academically in college, but she has never made any similar claim about her last two years of high school.
Ah, this is important. Because remember, at one point she said the attack occurred in her late teens.
She struggled academically in college, but if she says, well, after the attack, My grades cratered.
I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't do whatever she said, right?
If she says that her academics were harmed by the effects of the attack, and if she says the attack occurred when she was 15, then the last two years of high school should have been a disaster for her.
If they were, how did she get into college?
If they weren't, then that places the attack at a different time, a different year than what actually occurred.
So this is important as well.
The prosecutor continues, it is significant that she used the word contributed when she described the psychological impact of the incident to the Washington Post.
Use of the word contributed rather than cause suggests that other life events may have contributed to her symptoms.
And when questioned on that point, she said she could think of, quote, nothing as striking as, end quote, the alleged assault.
But clearly there are.
If she uses the word contributed, then there are other things that cause her mental health challenges.
What are they? Are they more important or less important and so on, right?
All right. She goes on to say, the activities of congressional Democrats and Dr.
Ford's attorneys likely affected Dr.
Ford's account and the timeline that's included.
I'll put a link to this below if you want to go more into details on the timeline, but that's...
Over here, you can go and I'll just show you here if you want.
You can go and have a look at this in more detail.
This goes on for quite a while and it's worth examining.
But this is a very powerful document.
Rachel Mitchell, the Nominations Investigative Council, has released this memorandum and you really can't get around or away from this because this whole, you know, believe women mantra, well, Rachel Mitchell is a woman.
Is she not worth believing?
Rachel Mitchell has vast experience of these matters.
Is she not worth accepting?
For the sake of the Republic, imagine if these accusations were being leveled against Obama right before the election.
If you get that, then you get how the Republicans feel and what the Republican perspective on all of this is.
And maybe, just maybe, we can have Some sort of reconciliation between these two perspectives.
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