Weighing the testimony

If we are taking an uncorroborated claim seriously, though, what does that mean for standards of proof? Much later in life, Ford told her therapist and husband, but at the end of the day we only have her word. If we were to base his guilt on her word alone, then wouldn’t people be able to make any kind of false allegation they liked?

Not quite. The existence of a “he said, she said” does not mean it’s impossible to figure out the truth. It means we have to examine what he said, and what she said, as closely as possible. If both parties speak with passion and clarity, but one of them says many inconsistent, evasive, irrational, and false things, while the other does not, then we actually have a very good indicator of which party is telling the truth. If a man claims to be innocent, but does things—like carefully manipulate words to avoid giving clear answers, or lie about the evidence—that you probably wouldn’t do if you were innocent, then testimony alone can substantially change our confidence in who to believe.

In this case, when we examine the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford honestly, impartially, and carefully, it is impossible to escape the following conclusions:

Brett Kavanaugh is lying.

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I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one.

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Ford has been clear: She is not talking about a big event. She is talking about a few friends and acquaintances hanging around drinking some beer in a living room

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Kavanaugh says that he never attended any event like this. Like what, though? He never attended a small gathering in Bethesda where people were drinking beer? Kavanaugh submitted his own calendars from the summer of 1982 into evidence for the Senate. As he said himself, “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.” He says that he never attended a gathering like this, but that’s obviously false, because the type of gathering he says he did attend is exactly the kind she describes.

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Maybe you think he just meant “I never went to this kind of small gathering with the people Ford says.” Indeed, Kavanaugh says:

[N]one of those gatherings included the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified. And as my calendars show, I was very precise about listing who was there; very precise.

Well it’s hard to misinterpret that. He was very precise. Who, then, is the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified? From her testimony:

There were four boys I remember specifically being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, a boy named P.J., and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I also remember my friend Leland attending.

  Current Affairs

Ford cited this gathering before Kavanaugh released his calendar, and I hope that calendar is the nail in his coffin. Who's he going to blame for that?

He's lying AND he's an idiot.

So presumably, if we looked at what Kavanaugh’s calendars show, we wouldn’t find an event with Mark Judge, P.J., some other boy, and Leland.

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But wait: Let’s look at the entry for July 1st, one Kavanaugh did not cite in his list of “parties with people who are not the people Ford cited.” On July 1st, Kavanaugh planned to go “to Timmy’s for skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.” There’s Mark Judge! There’s P.J.! So he gathered for [brew]skis with 2 of the 3 people Ford says she remembers being there. Small gathering? Beer? Judge, Brett, and P.J.? Check, check, and check.

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There’s another person who was at “Timmy’s”: a mysterious man named “Squi.” Squi was, in fact, a man named Chris Garrett, whom Ford says she went out with and who introduced her into Kavanaugh’s social circle. Garrett has attested to Kavanaugh’s good character, but because none of this has been properly investigated, we have no idea whether he admits to having gone out with Ford. If he did, that would cast doubt on Kavanaugh’s assertion that he had absolutely no idea who Ford was and she didn’t move “in his circle”: It would still be possible that they never met and Kavanaugh never heard her name, but there would be a clear connection.

Squi, as it turns out, is also the guy that Ed Whelen (and Orrin Hatch's office) tried to deflect suspicion onto for attacking Ford. He may well have changed his mind after that deplorable stunt.

One more person: Leland. Leland is Leland Ingham Keyser, Ford’s friend. Kavanaugh repeatedly cited her statement that she couldn’t remember this gathering.

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KAVANAUGH: All four witnesses who are alleged to be at the event said it didn’t happen. Including Dr. Ford’s long-time friend, Ms. Keyser, who said that she didn’t know me and that she does not recall ever being at a party with me with or without Dr. Ford. KAVANAUGH: All the witnesses who were there say it didn’t happen. Ms. Keyser’s her longtime friend, said she never saw me at a party with or without Dr. Ford… Do you notice something? THIS IS A BALD-FACED LIE. Keyser never said it “didn’t happen.”  [...] Keyser says she believes it happened, Kavanaugh tells the United States Senate that she said it didn’t.

Another fact about Keyser: She may not remember him, but he seems to remember her. When asked, he became extremely cagey and imprecise: MITCHELL: OK. Do you know Leland Ingham or Leland Keyser? KAVANAUGH: I — I know of her. And it — it’s possible I, you know, saw — met her in high school at some point at some event. Yes, I know — I know of her and, again, I don’t want to rule out having crossed paths with her in high school.

And then they pulled Rachel Mitchell out and went into damage control and posturing.

If you of course remember her, but that would provide a direct social tie between you and the woman you allegedly assaulted (whom you say “did not travel in the same social circles” as you), then you give an answer like the one Kavanaugh gave: Don’t specify when you heard of her, fudge it with the present tense (of course you know of her now, the question is whether you knew her then), and stutter your way through.

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Even Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s close friend who allegedly participated in the assault, pulled a bit of a shady “don’t recall”: “I have no memory of this alleged incident. Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.” That last bit is a denial that Judge himself participated in or witnessed such an assault, but here’s P.J.:

“I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh.”

Kavanaugh says P.J. denied that the event happened. That’s not what the statement says. Kavanaugh is a federal judge, a real smart cookie. I hope he knows the difference between the absence of an awareness of an event and an awareness of the absence of an event.

Oh, he knows, alright. But I think we could argue about him being a smart cookie.

Kavanaugh, for all his righteous weeping and insistence on his honesty, is not presenting the evidence accurately. He’s trying to suggest that it’s more unfavorable to Ford than it actually is. Saying “Everyone she says was there denies it” is far more effective than the truth: “Nobody she says was there remembers it, though one of them believes it happened.” Kavanaugh concluded that “Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers. Refuted.” It wasn’t refuted in the least.

Clearly, he is intentionally misleading. And sometimes outright lying.  (I'm still flabbergasted that everybody's acting like he didn't lie and obfuscate in the same way during his confirmation hearing.  He was already a proven liar before this even happened.)

Kavanaugh [...] tries to restrict the range of possible dates to weekends, and on weekends he largely has alibis. “Presumably” this event happened on a weekend he says, because they were hard-working kids and drinking wouldn’t happen on a weeknight. But he actually has precisely such an event on his calendar! The July 1st brewski-evening with P.J., Judge, et al. happened on a Thursday, according to his own record.

And this may be some of the best bullshit he tried to pass off:

When my friends and I spent time together at parties on weekends, it was usually the — with friends from nearby Catholic all-girls high schools, Stone Ridge, Holy Child, Visitation, Immaculata, Holy Cross. Dr. Ford did not attend one of those schools. She attended an independent private school named Holton-Arms and she was a year behind me… Dr. Ford has said that this event occurred at a house near Columbia Country Club, which is at the corner of Connecticut Avenue in the East-West Highway in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In her letter to Senator Feinstein, she said that there were four other people at the house but none of those people, nor I, lived near Columbia Country Club. As of the summer of 1982, Dr. Ford was 15 and could not drive yet and she did not live near Columbia Country Club. She says confidently that she had one beer at the party, but she does not say how she got to the house in question or how she got home or whose house it was.

Here Kavanaugh tries to undermine Ford with his superior specificity of location (he knows exactlyexactly which corner the street is), and by suggesting that Ford simply wouldn’t have encountered him because he was far away. Alright, here’s a map:

This is the Bethesda area in Maryland. From the top to the bottom is about five miles. The red marker is Kavanaugh’s school, Georgetown Prep. The purple is Ford’s school, Holton-Arms. The blue markers are two of the Catholic girls’ schools whose students Kavanaugh said he did encounter socially. And the green is the country club. I am not presenting this map to show anything elaborate or conspiratorial, I swear. I just want you to note that all of these places are within a very short distance of one another. Ford’s school is not remote, it’s in exactly in the area where Kavanaugh did meet students from other schools. And the country club is pretty close by.

Kavanaugh also doesn’t mention another salient fact, which is that his father and Ford’s father were members of the same golf club. Kavanaugh leaves details like this out, because he wants to create the impression that there was some considerable distance between the Bethesda prep-school community that Ford inhabited and the one he himself inhabited. But hang on, where did all these people live? Oh, turns out we have a map of that too:

Kavanaugh, who scoffs that he didn’t live near Ford’s country club, lived closer to it than she did!

I might as well stop here. The article goes on for much longer, including lies and deceptions about his character and behavior in high school and college. Check it out.

It's most thorough. And at times humorous.

And here's the conclusion:

What does it say about this country that this is the state of our discourse? That Kavanaugh even stands any chance of being made one of the most powerful figures in the American government, with control over life and liberty? That a man like this is even a judge? He went before the United States Senate and showed total contempt for his vow to tell the truth. He attempted to portray a highly esteemed doctor as a crazy person, by consistently misrepresenting the evidence. He treated the public like we were idiots, like we wouldn’t notice as he pretended he was ralphing during Beach Week from too many jalapeños, as he feigned ignorance about sex slang, as he misread his own meticulously-kept 1982 summer calendar, as he replied to questions about his drinking habits by talking about church, as he suggested there are no alcoholics at Yale, as he denied knowing who “Bart O’Kavanaugh” could possibly be based on, as he declared things refuted that weren’t actually refuted, as he claimed witnesses said things they didn’t say, as he failed to explain why nearly a dozen Yale classmates said he drank heavily, as he invented an imaginary drinking game to avoid admitting he had the mind of a sports jock in high school, as he said Ford had only accused him last week, as he responded to his roommate’s eyewitness statement with an incoherent story about furniture, as he pretended Bethesda wasn’t five miles wide, as he insisted Renate should be flattered by the ditty about how easy she was, as he declared that distinguished federal judges don’t commit sexual misconduct even though he had clerked for exactly such a judge.

And what does it say about us, and our political system, that he might well get away with it?

Pretty sure it says this handbasket we're in is already at the gate.

There were two instances in his testimony that I wished the senator questioning him had followed up:

1.  When Blumenthal asked him if he knew what a Latin phrase meant, Kavanaugh paused and then pulled that old standby (with requisite smarmy swagger):  Why don't YOU tell us, YOU can do it so much BETTER.  Blumenthal should have said, "No, I'd like to hear what you believe it means."  Or maybe just, "You don't know, do you?"  Instead, he told him what it meant.

2.  When Whitehouse asked him what "Devil's Triangle" meant, Kavanaugh said it's a drinking game.  I immediatetly though, "Ask him how it's played."  And Whitehouse did!  Kavanaugh tried to dismiss the question with, "It's a drinking game."  And Whitehouse actually followed that by asking him how it's played.  Sadly, when Kavanaugh asked if Whitehouse ever heard of "Quarters" and Whitehouse said he didn't, Kavanaugh merely said, "It's like Quarters."  Whitehouse failed to push him to answer the question and describe how it was done.  Kavanaugh, already having gone out on that limb by saying it's played with three cups arranged in a triangle, would have had to explain why there had to be three cups so arranged.  He could have done it, but he would have looked even more the lying fool that he already showed himself to be.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.