Remember, Leland Keyser is saying only 2 things:
1. I don't recall—as how could I—briefly being at a house in an unknown location, with an unknown owner, for maybe an hour or so in mid-1982, during which time nothing happened.
2. I believe that everything Dr. Ford says is true.
1. I don't recall—as how could I—briefly being at a house in an unknown location, with an unknown owner, for maybe an hour or so in mid-1982, during which time nothing happened.
2. I believe that everything Dr. Ford says is true.
2/ Keyser isn't a percipient witness in the normal sense, as she *didn't witness any crime*—and *no one says she did*—and the day was 36 years ago and non-notable for her. *And* Ford left the event early—so she wasn't even with Keyser for very long. Nor did she confide in Keyser.
3/ P.J. Smyth is an even less significant witness than Keyser, because not only was it a non-event for him, he didn't know Ford well. If—to the extent—Kavanaugh and Judge confided in him, which they'd have no reason to do having just committed a crime, he'd have a motive to lie.
4/ The real corroborating witnesses are those the FBI is forbidden from speaking to. Ford's therapist, Ford's husband, friends of Ford's from that time who say she changed dramatically in 1982, classmates from high school who say there were rumors of what had happened, and so on.
5/ Other corroborating witnesses include those who Ford disclosed to *when Kavanaugh wasn't a nominee*. Other corroboration: finding the house; finding out when Judge worked at the Safeway; and so on. The focus on Smyth/Keyser is designed to obscure actual corroborating evidence.
6/ Once Keyser and Smyth had said, "Look, why would I remember this? You're describing an unremarkable day in 1982 in which nothing happened to me and I didn't see anything," the focus of a *real* investigation would turn to *looking* for corroboration—and it's there *in spades*.
7/ Americans are getting from Trump and the GOP—and their allies in right-wing media—such a *false sense* of how criminal investigations work that it is destroying this critical civic knowledge base for an entire generation of citizens. It's *horrifying* for an attorney to watch.
8/ Worst of all, the shabby and unprofessional "investigation" Republicans are sanctimoniously demanding for this background investigation involving possible perjury and sex crimes is SO DIFFERENT from the hard-ass investigations right-wingers want of nonwhites accused of crimes.
PS/ Obviously Smyth and Keyser *can* be asked *many* questions not about the day in question but the habits and other behaviors of the 2 principals, which are implicitly corroborating (of Ford) and refuting (of Kavanaugh) based on the evidence we have from their other classmates.
