This emphatic rejection of impeachment proceedings by the very lawyer who plotted with the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to scuttle Kavanaugh’s nomination should not surprise anyone. Having failed to take down Kavanaugh with Ford’s tale of high school woe, delivered in a little girl's croaky stage voice designed to convey angst when there really is none, Ford’s handlers are now hustling their star witness off the public stage in the hope that her story will never be examined again. 

Ford cannot possibly be allowed to testify at any impeachment proceeding or other judicial inquiry, which would involve sustained and probing cross-examination of her all-too-conveniently sketchy account of how Brett Kavanaugh  allegedly mashed her at a drunken teenage house party somewhere or other back in 1982, or in the mid-1980s, or in the late-1980s, when she was fifteen or when she was in her “late teens,” depending on which version of the story Ford has told. 

Ford’s rickety testimony could not even hold up under gentle probing—during interrupted five-minute segments—at the supplemental hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the usual confirmation hearing process had been concluded. Even the Washington Post was constrained to publish an editorial on how Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor the Republican majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee hired for kid gloves questioning of Ford, “expertly eviscerates the case against Kavanaugh” in her post-hearing report.  To read the Mitchell report is to understand that Ford’s testimony is either a lie or some kind of semi-delusional fantasy no self-respecting prosecutor would treat as credible:

- Ford gives substantially inconsistent accounts of when the alleged “attempted rape” happened.

- Even what Ford described in her letter and her fake croaky voice at the hearing cannot be characterized as criminal conduct as opposed to ineffectual pawing by an adolescent who had had too many beers.

- Ford cannot provide single verifiable detail about where the alleged incident took place, how she got there or how she got home.

- Not one of the people Ford identifies as present at the alleged party has any memory of it, and two of them (the accused and his friend Mark Judge) categorically deny they ever attended it.

- Ford never mentioned any such incident to anyone for more than 30 years, and her first mention, during a “couples therapy” session in 2012, refers to a sexual assault by four boys, none of them named. Ford claimed this was a mistaken notation by the therapist—while her lawyers refused to provide the therapist’s notes to the Committee even though Ford had already provided them to a reporter.

- A subsequent reference to the alleged incident during individual therapy in 2013 likewise contains no mention of Kavanaugh.

- Ford claims she never wanted to go public with her story, yet she phoned it in to the Washington Post anonymous tip line in July, sent a letter to Senator Feinstein on July 30, hired a lawyer, Debra Katz, at Feinstein’s recommendation, and took a polygraph arranged by Katz on August 7. Meanwhile, Feinstein sat on Ford’s “confidential” letter until the main Senate committee hearings were over and a vote on confirmation, which seemed assured, was imminent. Only then did Feinstein publicly announce that she had sent the “confidential” letter to the FBI, which saw nothing worth investigating. Every fact bespeaks a conspiracy—in which Ford, a Democrat activist, participated—to set off a carefully hidden bomb only if Kavanaugh emerged unscathed from the confirmation hearing.  There is no indication that Ford, Katz or any other representative of Ford has made a protest or demanded any investigation regarding Feinstein’s actions or the leaking of the letter to the press. Feinstein and the press only did what Ford and her advisors wanted them to do, despite the narrative that Ford’s “trust” was betrayed.

- Ford clearly misled the Committee into postponing her testimony on the ground that she had to drive cross-country because Kavanaugh’s conduct 36 years ago had allegedly given her a fear of confined spaces, including airplane cabins, only to reveal under oath that she has regularly flown all over the world for business and pleasure. Confronted by her own blatant misrepresentation to the Committee, Ford offered the ludicrous explanation that its “Easier for me to travel going that direction [west] when it’s a vacation”—as if fear of flying could depend on direction or destination.

- While Ford could not recall any of the key details of time, place or circumstance surrounding the alleged sexual assault, she could remember that at a party 36 years ago “I drank one beer.”

- While claiming selectively to recall certain details of a sexual assault in a bedroom at some unknown location back in 1982, Ford pleaded an incredible lack of memory about whether, in the very month before her Senate testimony, she had given her crucial therapist notes to the reporter for the Washington Post, even though the reporter specifically cites those notes in her September 16 article revealing Ford as Kavanaugh’s accuser. This was an obvious attempt, probably involving coaching before the hearing, to avoid a waiver of the client-therapist privilege so that the notes could be hidden from the Committee.  Ford’s lawyers have since refused to provide the notes to the Committee, despite three written demands by its Chairman, Senator Grassley. Obviously, the notes must undermine Ford’s entire testimony concerning Kavanaugh.

- Ford likewise pleaded a suspicious failure of memory concerning the date of her polygraph on August 7—claiming, incredibly enough, that she is not certain whether it was the day of her grandmothers’ funeral or the day after, as if anyone of sound mind could not distinguish in memory very recent events on two such very different days.  She also claimed a lack of recent memory concerning whether the polygraph session was audio- or video-recorded. Tellingly, Ford’s lawyers have also refused to turn over all the related polygraph materials.

Consider in particular one element of Ford’s tale, appropriately highlighted in the Mitchell report, which in and of itself exposes her testimony as a fabrication: Her claim in the July 30 letter to Feinstein that after supposedly escaping the clutches of a would-be rapist “I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.” During her testimony before the Committee, Ford embellished this claim as follows: “I left the bathroom, went down the same stairwell through the living room, and left the house. I remember being on the street and feeling this enormous sense of relief that I had escaped that house and that Brett and Mark were not coming outside after me.”

The Senate was expected to believe that after fleeing in terror from a house where she had almost been raped, running right through a gathering that allegedly included not only the alleged perpetrators but her lifelong friend Leland Keyser, her memory suddenly ceased completely to function and she can provide no clue as to what happened next.   The Senate was also expected to swallow the claim that after she ran out of the house in the middle of the party, no one, not even her friend Leland, followed her outside to see what was wrong or ever inquired why she had run away from the gathering. Ford’s memory lapse seems contrived to avoid having to provide any details that could be verified: what style of house did she notice when standing on the sidewalk outside the premises from which she had just fled; what characteristics of the neighborhood can she recall as she stood outside the scene of the alleged crime; where she went immediately after fleeing the house; how she got home; who drove her home, if she was driven; what other means of transportation she used to get home, if not a friend’s or a relative’s car; what time she arrived home; who saw her in the immediate aftermath of her alleged flight from danger; who saw her when she arrived home; what Leland said to her when they next spoke after her sudden disappearance from the party, and so on. 

Quite incredibly, Ford’s story ends with her standing on the sidewalk outside an unknown house at an unknown location moments after she was almost raped.  After that, her mind is a blank. The Republican narrative that Ford was a credible witness who may merely have been mistaken about who assaulted her was an undeserved concession to a witness whose story is full of holes and plainly unworthy of belief.

Since the appearance of the Mitchell report, further revelations have destroyed the very foundation of Ford’s testimony as to why she only revealed the alleged sexual assault to her husband for the first time during the 2012 therapy session. Under oath before the Committee, Ford claimed that her memory of the assault had surfaced during therapy because “I had completed a very extensive, very long remodel of our home and I insisted on a second front door, an idea that [my husband] and others disagreed with and could not understand” but which Ford attributes to fear of being unable to escape a room with only one door following her alleged encounter with Kavanaugh decades earlier. 

As even the left-leaning Real Clear Investigations has determined,  Ford’s explanation does not pass the smell test.  In a report published October 2, Real Clear notes that public records establish that “the door was installed years before as part of an addition,” “has been used by renters and even a marriage counseling business”—by another therapist, not Ford—and thus “was not an escape route but an entrance route” to a room separated from the rest of the home. “It appears,” says Real Clear’s report, that “the real plan for the second front door was to rent out a separate room.” 

In short, on this point Ford lied through her teeth. Accordingly, as even Real Clear concludes: “The discrepancy raises fresh doubts about Ford’s candor and credibility amid other inconsistencies, congressional and other knowledgeable sources say, including her purported ‘fear of flying.’”  Moreover, as Real Clear observes in the closing lines of its report: “But the far more recent story of the ‘second front door’ also seemed to recede in Ford’s memory banks, only to pop up after speculation about her political motives grew. She did not mention it in her original letter to Feinstein in July, or the statement she made for a polygraph exam in August, or a personal letter to Grassley last month. The tale of the door emerged, suddenly, on the eve of her testimony before Congress.”

On the same date, October 2, Ford’s ex-boyfriend, with whom she had a long relationship including a period of living together, filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee a declaration stating that he had witnessed Ford help her friend, Monica McLean, prepare for a polygraph exam (required to apply for the position she later obtained at the FBI) based on Ford’s experience as psychologist. That revelation flatly contradicts Ford’s testimony under questioning by Mitchell (who seemed to know something about the ex-boyfriend’s forthcoming statement) that she had never given any such advice to anyone. McLean has since denied that Ford prepped her for her polygraph, but only in an unsworn statements to the media. Ford has not denied it all.

The ex-boyfriend further attests that during their long relationship Ford never exhibited any fear of flying, even in a propeller plane, nor any fear of enclosed spaces, and that in California she had rented a “500-square foot house with one door.”  Moreover, after removing Ford’s name from their joint credit card, the ex-boyfriend discovered almost a year later that Ford had charged some $600 to the card without his permission, which fraud she at first denied but then admitted when he threatened to have the matter investigated by the credit card company’s fraud department. Ford has not denied this allegation either.

Quite simply, Ford is an easily demonstrable prevaricator and embellisher, even if she may be delusional enough to believe her own falsehoods. That is why she and her lawyers are running away from the sustained scrutiny that would come with an impeachment proceeding.  Now Ford clearly hopes to join the ranks of other women who have falsely accused men of sexual assault or harassment only to escape all consequences when their phony stories were exposed, including these infamous liars:

- Tawana Brawley, who falsely accused four white men of raping her in 1987.

- Anita Hill, who in 1991 falsely accused Justice Clarence Thomas of workplace sexual harassment in the early 1980s.

- Crystal Mangum, who falsely accused three members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping her in in 2006. (Magnum was later convicted of murdering her boyfriend.)

- Jackie Coakley, who falsely accused members of a University of Virginia fraternity of gang raping her in 2012.

- Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University “mattress girl,” who falsely accused a fellow student of raping her in 2013.

Also hoping to get away scot free are two other false accusers of Justice Kavanaugh, trotted out by DNC operatives in a desperate eleventh-hour attempt to sink his nomination by concocting the necessary “pattern” of sexual misconduct:

- Deborah Ramirez, who, after six days of “assessing her memories”­—with the help of a Democrat lawyer—literally imagined the tale that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a frat party at Yale some 35 years ago. Even the New York Times viewed the claim, rushed into print by The New Yorker, as an apparent fabrication for which it could find no corroboration whatsoever. As the Times notes, Ramirez herself told potential witnesses she could not be sure it was Kavanaugh who had exposed himself.

- Julie Swetnick, whose preposterous tale of a Catholic schoolboy gang rape operation led by Kavanaugh when he was sophomore in high school, of which she herself claimed to be a victim after previously attending a series of Kavanaugh’s gang rape parties, was exposed as a hoax by the loony Swetnick herself.  During a disastrous interview aired by MSNBC, Swetnick repeatedly contradicted or backed away from her sworn statement to the Judiciary Committee. Like the rest of the leftwing media complex, MSNBC had abandoned even the pretense of journalistic integrity during the maniacal media campaign to destroy Kavanaugh.

None of the false accusers of men noted here has ever been brought to justice for her lies, which ruined the lives of the accused despite their ultimate vindication. But where Justice Kavanaugh is concerned, the Senate has the opportunity to redress the wrong done.  Ford has demonstrably lied or falsely embellished her story under oath and is still concealing crucial evidence that would probably negate her entire testimony. Swetnick perjured herself by filing a patently false affidavit with the Committee, prepared by Michael Avenatti, aka Creepy Porn Lawyer, wherein she deviously implies but carefully avoids actually stating that Kavanaugh participated in the gang rape of her and others. (Creepy Porn Lawyer has since tried but failed to save Swetnick—and himself—by submitting another sworn statement by another bogus witness, who likewise falsely implies but fails explicitly to claim criminal acts by a teenaged Kavanaugh). 

The Senate Judiciary Committee should now conduct a thorough post-confirmation investigation of Ford, Ramirez, Swetnick, Avenatti, and anyone else involved in advancing their false and misleading claims, including Senator Feinstein and her staff along with the rest of the Democrat minority on the Committee and the lawyers for Ford.  For starters, the Committee must obtain the therapist notes and polygraph materials Ford and her lawyers are hiding as they try to run from the scene of the debacle they engineered.  Criminal and bar ethics committee referrals should then follow as appropriate.  

The Senate would fail in its duty if it allowed this epochal travesty to go unpunished.  Senators Grassley, McConnell and Graham, who exhibited considerable courage in the face of a coordinated DNC smear campaign backed by screaming mobs and hordes of braying media jackals, should now do justice in full. They must not be content with the mere fact that yet another victim of a false accusation of sexual misconduct barely survived the attempt to destroy him, but with his reputation in tatters.  The women who have perpetrated this massive fraud, and everyone who enabled them, should be brought to justice if justice still has any meaning in America.