Pavlich: Discredited claims against Kavanaugh

It’s been another week in Washington that has felt like a year.

Shortly after the Senate Judiciary Committee  wrapped up three days of a raucous confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) finally lit the fuse on a bomb she had been holding for weeks.

Feinstein claimed she had explosive allegations, made by an unnamed person, against Kavanaugh and sent them to the FBI.

{mosads}

“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,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein made the accusations seem like they were new when, in fact, her office received them in July. She had a number of opportunities to ask Kavanaugh about the accusation, in public and private. She failed to do so, holding it as a political weapon instead.

After days of speculation, Christine Blasey Ford was revealed in The Washington Post as the woman Feinstein referred to. Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.

“Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend — both ‘stumbling drunk,’ Ford alleges — corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in Montgomery County,” the Post reported. “While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.”

Ford’s attorneys, both bonafide members of the “resistance,” demanded a hearing and after nearly two days of ignoring phone calls from committee staff to set one up, an agreement for testimony in Washington, D.C., was finally reached. Eventually, Ford took an oath in front of the country and told her story.

“The details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult,” Ford testified.

But a close following of Ford’s testimony, compared to statements previously given to The Washington Post and the Senate Judiciary Committee, showed the details of her account weren’t clear and contained alarming discrepancies.

Rachel Mitchell, a veteran sex crimes prosecutor who was hired by committee Republicans to question Ford, took notice.

“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,” Mitchell wrote. “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.”

You don’t have to be a veteran prosecutor to have caught a number of discrepancies in Ford’s testimony: when the party happened, where the party was, who exactly was there, how she got home, who she told about the alleged incident and more. These holes were glaringly obvious.

But between the time Ford went public and testified in front of the committee, Democrats, leftist operatives and their allies in the media knew one uncorroborated allegation from 36 years wasn’t going to cut it, so they went fishing for more. 

Infamous lawyer Michael Avenatti released a sworn statement for his client, Julie Swetnick, who suggested Kavanaugh engaged in gang rape at a series of high school parties in the 1980s. Feinstein put Swetnick’s story into the Congressional Record.

“During the years 1981-82, I became aware of efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties I attended with drugs and/or grain alcohol so as to cause girls to lose their inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No,’ ” Swetnick said in a sworn statement. “I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys. I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms …  these boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”

A quick look into Swetnick’s background, which exposes a history of suspect claims and lawsuits, immediately raised a series of credibility red flags. Her ex-boyfriend, who came close to filing a restraining order against her, said she threatened to kill his unborn child.

During an interview with NBC News, Swetnick’s story fell apart. Not only did she botch the timeline about when she decided to come forward about her claims, she went from accusing Kavanaugh of “spiking the punch” at parties and insinuating he engaged in “gang rape,” to saying she saw him standing next to the punch and wasn’t sure if gang rape occurred.

“I saw him around the punch, I won’t say bowls, or the punch containers. I don’t know what he did, but I saw him by them,” Swetnick said.

When asked about whether Kavanaugh had engaged in gang rape as she suggested, she couldn’t say.

Other accusations from different individuals were brought forward, published in major news outlets and then thoroughly  discredited. The Senate Judiciary Committee is pursuing charges against at least one individual who lied about Kavanaugh assaulting someone on a boat in Rhode Island.

After the chaos and charades, it’s clear the goal here wasn’t justice for sexual assault victims. Instead, the goal was to pile as much on Kavanaugh, however false, unfair or unjust, to create a cloud of doubt about his corroborated, impeccable character.

Democrats and their allies in the leftist media keep arguing this isn’t a trial, regardless of where the allegation has come from. That is correct, but they don’t want it to be. Trials require fairness to the accused and standards of evidence. At the very least, they require corroboration. Democrats don’t want fairness for Kavanaugh and they certainly don’t want the requirement of providing evidence. Instead, they want an accusation to be good enough to keep him out of the seat he has earned through a life of public service, decency and dedication to the U.S. Constitution.

For justice, Kavanaugh must be confirmed.

Pavlich is the editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor.