The Case against Kavanaugh Is Collapsing nationalreview.com/2018/10/brett-…
A very strange thing happened over the weekend: If you follow Twitter closely, you’ll notice that the debate over Kavanaugh moved significantly from the question — did he commit sexual assault? —
— to a raging debate about whether he lied about high-school slang, college drinking, and inside jokes, and whether he was just too “angry” to be a Supreme Court judge.
This torrent of commentary (most of it silly, including competing, furious arguments about how people described anal sex in 1982) obscures an important development: The sexual-assault claims against Kavanaugh are in a state of collapse.
Let’s deal with the easiest issue first. The day before the hearing, Michael Avenatti released a “declaration” by Julie Swetnick, claiming that she saw Kavanaugh “waiting his turn” for gang rapes after facilitating them by spiking or drugging the punch at high-school parties.
She claimed that she went to multiple such parties and was gang raped at one of them, though she would only assert that Kavanaugh was present on that occasion.
The claim against Kavanaugh was transparently absurd. The idea that a person would repeatedly attend gang-rape parties and that the existence of these parties (which would presumably generate multiple victims and witnesses) remained utterly secret for decades is nonsense
But left-wing Twitter took up the claims with a vengeance, dragging anyone who dared express doubt through the mud. After all, didn’t the Catholic Church scandals prove that crimes could be concealed?
But then the Wall Street Journal did some actual reporting, “contacting dozens of former classmates and colleagues,” only to find it “couldn’t reach anyone with knowledge of [Swetnick’s] allegations.”
Moreover, “no friends have come forward to publicly support her claims.” Again, she alleged repeated gang rapes. Yet there are still no other witnesses.
Meanwhile, Deborah Ramirez’s allegation — that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party at Yale — remains essentially where it was last week, uncorroborated and difficult to believe. She was drinking heavily at the time.
She confesses that her memory contains “gaps.” She even told other classmates that she wasn’t certain it was Kavanaugh. No one else could even confirm he was at the party where the incident allegedly occurred.
No responsible journalistic outlet should have run the story. And without more evidence, no fair-minded person should believe it today.
Which brings us to Christine Blasey Ford. Yesterday, Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell released a memorandum to all Republican senators summarizing Ford’s evidence against Kavanaugh. I’d urge you to read the entire thing.
Democrats are describing it as a “partisan document,” but it refers to multiple, undisputed facts that should cause even Ford’s most zealous defenders to pause and reevaluate her claims.
Ford has no corroborating witnesses, and even the friend she says was at the party in question has denied being there or knowing Kavanaugh. She doesn’t know who invited her to the party, where it took place, how she got there, or how she got home after Kavanaugh attacked her.
But the problems go beyond gaps in memory. She has offered substantially different accounts about when the attack occurred (she’s previously said it happened in the “mid Eighties,” in her “late teens,” and in the “Eighties.”
Now she’s saying it happened in 1982, when she was 15) and how it occurred (her therapist’s notes conflict with her story of the attack, and she has offered different accounts about who attended the party).
No responsible lawyer would bring even a civil case on the facts described above, and civil cases must meet only the lowest burden of proof. Believe women? Believe men? No. Believe evidence. It’s possible that the FBI investigation will uncover additional material facts.
It’s also possible that the investigation will leave us back where we started — with entirely insufficient evidence to prove even one of the terrible claims against a person who was once one of the most-respected public servants in America.
