OPINION:
First, let’s dispose of the tales of the two accusers of Brett Kavanaugh who came out after flaky California college professor Christine Blasey Ford claimed that the Supreme Court nominee sexually groped her 36 years ago when he was 17.
This won’t take long.
Julie Swetnick, represented by porn star lawyer Michael Avenatti, claims she saw Kavanaugh “waiting his turn” to gang-rape girls at high school parties after spiking the punch to, you know, make the raping easier. Forget that Ms. Swetnick, who has a weird history (just Google her), said she attended a bunch of parties also attended by Mr. Kavanaugh after she was gang-raped. She’s got more problems with her tale.
Ms. Swetnick “provided four names to NBC News that she said could confirm her descriptions of the parties in the 1980s. NBC News contacted all four: One said they did not remember a Julie Swetnick, one was dead, and two did not respond,” Mediaite reported. The Wall Street Journal also said it contacted “dozens of former classmates and colleagues” but “couldn’t reach anyone with knowledge of her allegations.” More: “No friends have come forward to publicly support her claims.”
That takes care of Ms. Swetnick.
Then there’s Deborah Ramirez. She claims Mr. Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party at Yale 35 years ago. She didn’t remember much; she was drinking heavily at the time. She called a bunch of other classmates before she came forward because she wasn’t even sure it was Mr. Kavanaugh who did what she eventually claimed he did. Since then, no one has come forward to back up her claim. No one.
Done with Ms. Ramirez.
Then there’s Ms. Blasey Ford, the college professor with the little-girl voice and the Valley Girl delivery. Ms. Blasey Ford — hailed as a hero by Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday — says Mr. Kavanaugh sexually abused her at a drunken high school party in 1982 when she was 15.
Well, that’s what she says now. She’s also said the event happened in the “mid-‘80s” when she was in her “late teens.” But she doesn’t know who invited her to the party or where it took place, how she got there or how she got home afterward. (She testified she fled the party, but was at least 7 miles from home. This was long before cellphones, so how did she get home?)
The sex crimes prosecutor who questioned Ms. Blasey Ford at the Senate hearing wrote a devastating report about her story. This was one of the entries:
“Dr. Ford has named three people other than Judge Kavanaugh who attended the party — Mark Judge, Patrick ‘PJ’ Smyth, and her lifelong friend Leland Keyser (nee Ingham). Dr. Ford testified to the Committee that another boy attended the party, but that she could not remember his name. No others have come forward.
“All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying any memory of the party whatsoever. Most relevantly, in her first statement to the Committee, Ms. Keyser stated through counsel that, ‘[s]imply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.’ In a subsequent statement to the Committee through counsel, Ms. Keyser said that ‘the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford’s allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.’”
After the Thursday hearing, Ms. Mitchell briefed senators in a late-night meeting attended by all 51 Republicans.
“Mitchell spelled it out and was clear with senators that she could not take this anywhere near a courtroom,” one source told Fox News. Ms. Mitchell, who specializes in sex crimes, told them she would never charge the Supreme Court nominee and reportedly said she wouldn’t even seek a search warrant.
So that takes care of Ms. Blasey Ford.
But this was never about any of the Kavanaugh accusers. This was always about Democrats trying to force Mr. Kavanaugh to bail or to push the vote past the Nov. 6 midterm elections, in which the Democrats hope to retake control of the Senate. Case in point: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee, said Tuesday that she thinks a Friday vote on Mr. Kavanaugh will not give senators enough time to evaluate the FBI probe of sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Gertrude Stein famously said, “There is no there there.”
That was in 1937, but it applies today to the Kavanaugh case.
And the Democrats know it.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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