THE PATRIOT POST 10/03/2018 ALEXANDER'S COLUMN

The Feinstein/Ford Blockade: Chronology, Testimony, and Hypocrisy

This has NEVER been about finding the truth but about creating unjust and inexcusable political optics.

Mark Alexander

"It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice." —Thomas Jefferson (1790) "An allegation standing alone is not necessarily sufficient to conclude that conduct occurred." That was the conclusion of the Democrat attorney hired to investigate domestic-violence allegations against DNC Deputy Chairman, aspiring Minnesota Attorney General, and Rep. Keith Ellison. His victim had medical records and a police report associated with her charges, and had discussed the alleged assault with others. Additionally, there is at least one other assault allegation against Ellison noted in a 2005 police report by another woman. These charges are more serious, more recent, better documented, and more suggestive of a pattern of abuse than the unsupported, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, and in fact refuted allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh groped another teenager 36 years ago. But Ellison's defenders incessantly remind us that the allegations against Ellison could be false, especially the lawyer who cleared him — whose firm has given more than $500,000 to Democrat candidates. Again, "An allegation standing alone is not necessarily sufficient to conclude that conduct occurred." Of course, nothing close to that assertion, or its inherent assumption of innocence (a foundational standard of constitutional Rule of Law), entered the rhetorical lexicon of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats in their "search and destroy" mission against Judge Kavanaugh. That charade, scripted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), disgracefully used a distressed woman with conflicted memories, Christine Ford, as a political pawn. Feinstein seems to have achieved the optics Democrats were after, enraging their largest voter constituency, women, whom Demos treat like emotionally incontinent dupes. As was their plan, Ford became the poster proxy for women who have had regrettable sexual encounters — from sexual harassment in the workplace, to encounters resulting from alcohol- or drug-impaired cognitive ability, to victimization by violent sexual assault. For women who have experienced an encounter anywhere on this spectrum, Ford embodies their collective anger, grief, and desire for justice, regardless of whether Ford's allegations are true. Conversely, Judge Kavanaugh became the poster proxy for every man who has ever offended a woman, from street-side cat-callers to serial rapists. As Democrats estimated, blocking the Kavanaugh nomination has become the proxy path to achieve a sense of collective "justice." Never mind the end-justifies-the-means standard of "justice" they seek, which is the same sort of injustice upon which totalitarian regimes are built and sustained. In January of this year, I wrote in "The Democrats' 2018 Midterm Election Strategy" that they were "going to make the #MeToo 'epidemic of sexual assault' the centerpiece of their 2018 and 2020 elections." Feinstein's timing of the Kavanaugh derailment was a setup for the upcoming midterm elections, manufactured to energize enough women voters to carry Democrats to victory, particularly in those states where Donald Trump won majorities in 2016. Recall that in the scheduled hearings for Judge Kavanaugh, when hordes of leftists were disrupting the Senate committee chamber and hallways, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) declared: "Why [are these protests] happening for the first time in the history of this committee? ... You are the nominee of President Donald John Trump." Monday marked the beginning of a new Supreme Court term — without Kavanaugh. Well played, Feinstein. As place markers for the Democrats' metastasizing investigation into Kavanaugh and their assault on our Constitution, what follows are three summaries of Feinstein's ruse. First, a chronology of how Feinstein scripted the events. Second, a list of significant problems with Ford's testimony. And last, a look at the hypocrisy of Kavanaugh's accusers on the Judiciary Committee. The Feinstein/Ford Timeline... To review, the objective of Feinstein's script to derail Kavanaugh was, and remains, to influence the midterm elections (particularly to flip the Senate, which would then make it difficult for Trump to nominate another SCOTUS candidate before the next Congress is seated in January, but also to flip committee control in the House, which would then bring to a screeching halt the investigation of the corrupt investigators in the phony Trump-Russia-collusion probe). To that end, despite the deal that committee Demos cut with Sen. Jeff Flake (?-AZ) last Thursday for a now-seventh FBI investigation of Kavanaugh that would be "limited in time and scope, to the current allegations ... and limited in time to no more than one week," Feinstein predictably declared Tuesday, "I believe it's too soon. ... We have to put all the facts together." This timeline of the Feinstein/Ford collusion to derail Kavanaugh is based on the Judiciary Committee chronology and other investigative sources. On 30 July, Feinstein says she received a draft of a letter from Christine Blasey Ford with allegations against Judge Kavanaugh. It had previously been sent to Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA). It was not until after the conclusion of the 4-7 September confirmation hearings that the allegations against Kavanaugh were leaked to the mainstream media, without disclosing Ford's name. Feinstein did not make the Ford letter known to Republicans on the committee until almost a week after the close of the Kavanaugh hearings on 7 September. She claims the committee Democrats had only learned of it the day before. On 13 September, Feinstein advised committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) of the letter's existence without naming Ford, and she sent a copy of the letter to the FBI. According to Feinstein's script, she told the media, "I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities." Of course, this feigned desire to remain anonymous was meant to give Ford credibility and to suggest that she and Feinstein had no political motive. But it's highly likely that Feinstein's staff arranged for the contents of the letter to be "leaked," and that is a matter the FBI should take up. On 16 September, The Washington Post published an article with Ford's name — which is how Sen. Grassley and his fellow Republicans found out who'd written the letter. On the 17th, Ford's counsel told the MSM that Ford wanted a public hearing on the matter. A redacted copy of the Ford letter was leaked to CNN and published. The committee invited Ford to a hearing the following Monday, but no response was received from Ford or her attorneys. Judge Kavanaugh was then interviewed by committee investigative staff, but Democrats refused to participate in that interview. On 20 September, Feinstein gave an un-redacted copy of the Ford letter to Grassley. Told that Ford wanted to maintain her anonymity and has a fear of flying, committee staff informed her attorneys that they would fly to California to interview her. In her testimony, Ford said she was never advised of this offer, almost certainly because Feinstein and Ford's Democrat-activist attorneys were pushing for an optically sensational public hearing. Which they ultimately got. The full details between 13 and 27 September can be read in the committee chronology, but suffice it to say that Feinstein's motives are betrayed by what occurred between the time she received the Ford letter on 30 July and the time its contents were leaked to the press as the Kavanaugh hearings were concluding during the second week of September. On 27 June, Democrats were alarmed by the announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement. They were even more alarmed on 9 July, when President Trump announced an exceptional (and more solidly conservative) replacement for Kennedy, his former clerk Brett Kavanaugh. Coinciding with Feinstein's receipt of Ford's letter, there was a conference call to Democrats about the Kavanaugh nomination from leftist strategist Ricki Seidman (who became one of Ford's "advisers"). In that conference call, Seidman stated, "Over the coming days and weeks there will be a strategy that will emerge, and I think it's possible that that strategy might ultimately defeat the [Kavanaugh nomination]." Given the nature and age of the allegations, Feinstein — and Ford, who teaches psychology of all things — most certainly knew that Ford should've gotten a forensic interview from a professional sex-crime investigator in order to determine the veracity of her claims. In essence, this is the equivalent of preserving the evidence so that it's not contaminated, even though the evidence consisted only of Ford's allegations. But the "evidence" was grossly contaminated in order that if fit into Feinstein's plan. A forensic interview would have helped substantiate Ford's perception about what happened to her — in order to get to the truth. Yet this has NEVER been about finding the truth but about creating unjust and inexcusable political optics. Harvard Law School professor emeritus and liberal Democrat Alan Dershowitz says of Feinstein's play: "When it's a white man being accused by the Left of sexual offenses, all the rules are called off. The rules of presumption of innocence, the rules of due process — 'we know he's guilty because he's a white man, she's a woman, she's a survivor,' that's the end of the inquiry." Instead, soon after receiving the letter, Feinstein suggested that Ford lawyer up, recommending Debra Katz, a hardcore Beltway Democrat specializing in sexual harassment. Katz and other Democrats then huddled with Ford, coaching her on how to proceed and, among other things, having her take a two-question polygraph examination, which determined only that Ford believed the story she had crafted. Astoundingly, when asked about the leak at the close of Judge Kavanaugh's testimony, Feinstein looked flustered, and after asserting that her staff did not leak the letter, she actually had the unmitigated audacity to blame Ford — to blame the "victim." It's now clear that Feinstein had no intention of maintaining Ford's "privacy" and that she scripted the entire charade. Feinstein should therefore be interviewed by the FBI to determine the sequence of events and motives behind the leaking of Ford's letter. Feinstein's actions, or those of her cutouts, likely warrant felony charges. To that end, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), himself a Harvard-educated attorney, warned, "[Ford's] lawyers are going to face a DC bar investigation into their misconduct" for not informing Ford that Senate investigators had offered to travel to California to interview her. Cotton also insisted, "Dianne Feinstein and her staff are going to face an investigation for why they leaked that. All of this could have been done discreetly. It happens hundreds of times every year in the Judiciary Committee." Substantive Problems With Ford's Testimony... Where to start with Ford's salacious, unsupported, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, and in fact refuted claims? With an analytical ear and eye, I evaluated every painful minute of both the Ford and Kavanaugh testimonies. Here's my list of inconsistencies. As to when the alleged groping occurred, Ford claimed, in communications with The Washington Post on 6 July, before sending her letter to Feinstein on 30 July, that the attack happened in the "mid 1980s." Her letter to Feinstein noted "the early 80s." She claimed in her testimony that she recalled running into Mark Judge (whom she says was with Kavanaugh when he assaulted her but who categorically denies it) at the Potomac Village Safeway some weeks after the incident, and that helped her place the timeline. Apparently, Judge wrote a casual memoir that mentioned working at a food store, and Feinstein's staff put that together for Ford after reviewing what Judge wrote. Who did she tell that Kavanaugh was the alleged attacker? Until July of this year, she had never named him. Ford testified that she told her husband about a "sexual assault" before they were married in 2002 — 20 years after the alleged groping — but had told him it was "physical abuse" before they were married. But she didn't name the alleged assailant, and no name was mentioned in her 2012 marriage therapy or her 2013 individual therapy. Where did it happen? Ford only knows in broad terms when and where she attended a party and was allegedly groped by Kavanaugh. She doesn't know how she got to the party, who took her, or whether it was before or after others arrived. Ford doesn't recall which of the "visibly drunk" boys, Kavanaugh or Judge, pushed her into the room, who turned up the music, or who pushed her onto the bed. She claimed Kavanaugh covered her mouth to keep her from crying out for help, but after some sort of groping, the three of them just toppled onto the floor, at which time the two drunk boys just let her "get up and run out of the room" to the bathroom right across the hall. Why did she not run down the stairs for help instead of running to the bathroom right across the hall from the bedroom, where she stayed until the two boys had "loudly walked down the narrow stairs, pin-balling off the walls on the way down"? Ford doesn't recall who took her home after the party, approximately eight miles from where she estimates the party might have been. Ford claims, "The details about that night ... I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory." But she has forgotten just about everything except that she just "drank one beer." However, nobody else remembers the alleged details, much less the party — even her friend Leland Keyser, whom she also places at the gathering. Indeed, all the alleged witnesses named by Ford have refuted her account. Regarding Ford's memory, Rachel Mitchell, the sex-crimes prosecutor who interviewed her, asked if Feinstein had suggested she obtain a "forensic interview" as noted in law-enforcement guidelines, because "effective investigation requires cooperation with a multi-disciplinary team that includes medical professionals, victim advocates, dedicated forensic interviewers, criminalists, and other law enforcement members." Ford stated simply, "No," but someone of Ford's academic standing, a PhD in psychology, should certainly have known that a forensic interview would have been part of the correct course of action. Ford gave very technical testimony about memories, noting that various neurotransmitters "code memories into the hippocampus, and so the trauma-related experience is locked there, whereas other details kind of drift." But it never occurred to her, or Feinstein, or the attorneys she recommended for Ford that a forensic interview was in order? Mitchell outlined many serious inconsistencies in a lengthy analysis of Ford's testimony, concluding, "A 'he said, she said' case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that." Key points of those inconsistencies are outlined here and here. Tuesday, a man who was in a relationship with Ford for six years prior to her marriage has submitted a sworn statement to Sen. Grassley, casting significant doubt on the claims in Ford's testimony. Among other things, he wrote, "During our time dating, Dr. Ford never brought up anything regarding her experience as a victim of sexual assault, harassment, or misconduct." And he also indicated, contrary to Ford's testimony, that she had coached someone else about passing a polygraph exam. This other person denies his claim. Washington attorney James Thurber has compiled a lot of questions the FBI should be asking Dr. Ford. Predictably, as the Feinstein/Ford case against Kavanaugh is collapsing, Democrats are now desperately moving the goalposts, shifting their investigation to his testimony about his high-school yearbook and his comments about alcohol use, thereby seeking some path, any path to perjury. (This is similar to the Democrats' shift, once the fake Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy began to collapse, to an obstruction of justice investigation.) For the record, the previous FBI probes would have covered the question of alcohol use. Finally, the Hypocrites... Ford's spurious allegations are being heralded by the party of serial sexual assailant Bill Clinton and his chief defender and enabler Hillary Clinton, and by DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison. Feinstein, a card-carrying Clintonista, now wants to investigate groping allegations from 36 years ago? Somebody get Juanita Broaddrick and Clinton's other victims on the line. And there sits committee member Sen. Cory "Spartacus" Booker (D-NJ), judging Kavanaugh for allegedly groping somebody 36 years ago. But it was Booker who revealed in a college newspaper that he had once groped an intoxicated 15-year-old girl. But at the very top of the "creep factor" scale is committee member Richard "Stolen Valor" Blumenthal (D-CT), who made it clear this week that no amount of FBI investigation would be sufficient: "This list of witnesses is only a beginning. It's not the end of what the FBI needs to do." When questioning Kavanaugh, Blumenthal strolled out a little Latin: "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," noting the principle in a trial that when a witness lies about one thing, he will lie about anything. But it's Blumenthal who is the most egregious of liars. In his best put-on, he declared that Kavanaugh was guilty as charged and would be a "stain" on the Supreme Court. But according to even The New York Times, Blumenthal is a well-documented liar. He's also a stain on the U.S. Senate. In the run-up to his first Senate campaign in 2010, then-Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal repeatedly declared that he had served in Vietnam — but he did not. At an event honoring veterans, Blumenthal asserted, "We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam, and you exemplify it." At a memorial service for fallen veterans, he said, "When we returned from Vietnam, I remember the taunts, the verbal and even physical abuse we encountered. We had to endure taunts and insults, and no one said 'Welcome home.'" On another occasion to welcome OEF and OIF veterans home, he said, "When we returned, we saw nothing like this." According to the Times, after at least five deferments, "In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, [Blumenthal] landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive." Caught in his disgraceful lie, Blumenthal said, "I may have misspoken — I did misspeak — on a few occasions [but] I will not allow anyone to take a few of those misplaced words and impugn my record of service. I regret that I misspoke..." Whatever you say, Sergeant Stolen Valor. Laughably, leaping to new hypocritical heights, Feinstein offered this assessment of Kavanaugh's response to her witch-hunt charade: "Judge Kavanaugh did not reflect an impartial temperament, or the fairness and even-handedness one would see in a judge. He was aggressive and belligerent. He should not be rewarded with a lifetime Supreme Court seat." Just how is an innocent man supposed to comport himself when confronted with an utterly flimsy 36-year-old attempted rape allegation? Answer: with righteous indignation. (Had Kavanaugh instead responded meekly and mildly during his testimony, you can be certain that Democrats would've pointed to his lack of anger as evidence of his guilt.) Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also got the parroting memo: "Judge Kavanaugh harbors deep, deep partisan resentments. That's not the kind of Justice we need on the Supreme Court." And after dragging Kavanaugh and the nation through this charade, now Feinstein is arguing that the final FBI report should remain highly confidential... All said, on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called out Democrats on their Kavanaugh agenda, saying: "The national spectacle the professional left has created around Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process has now reached some kind of fever pitch ... a [virtual] mudslide of wild, uncorroborated accusations have poured out. This mudslide has been actively embraced, urged on and capitalized upon by Democrats inside this chamber and [their] far-left special interests. ... The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close. Judge Kavanaugh's nomination is out of committee. We're considering it here on the floor and ... we'll be voting this week." As we await the FBI report, notably, a Harvard Center for American Political Studies poll was just released, and according to that survey this week, 60% of Americans support Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation if the FBI finds no other evidence to corroborate Ford's accusations. And 75% of respondents believe that Feinstein should have provided Ford's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee when she received it in July, rather than waiting until Kavanaugh's hearing had concluded. Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776