Serious Does Not Mean Credible

By Erick Erickson Professor Christine Blasey Ford has made a serious allegation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh President Donald Trumps first nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Progressive activists seeking to scuttle Kavanaughs nomination would have us believe that Fords allegations are credible because they are serious. We should not confuse the two. Ford claims that in an indeterminate year but at least 35 years ago in an indeterminate location with an indeterminate group of people Kavanaugh drunkenly attempted to sexually assault Ford both of them then high school students. The only details Ford can remember are that Kavanaugh did it aided by another high school student named Mark Judge while another high school student named Patrick Smyth was in the house. All three men deny it. Ford says she told no one until 2012 by which time Kavanaughs name had circulated in the media as a potential Supreme Court pick by Mitt Romney. Democrats would have us believe trauma can cause memory failure and memory unreliability. They would be right. But if a victim of sexual assault can forget the year the location and the people present surely she can also forget or confuse the assailant for someone else. To be clear Ford may have been assaulted. But it is fiction to blame Kavanaugh. It is fiction and not just unlikely because everyone who has known Kavanaugh since before and after the alleged incident attests to it being completely out of his character. It is fiction because young men who would behave that way as a junior or senior in high school never really give up the bad behavior except through a profound religious transformation. Kavanaugh though a practicing Catholic has never had such a profound life-changing religious transformation. What he does have though is a clean record of hiring and working with lots of women. He has never had an allegation of abuse assault coercion or harassment against him. Lastly it is fiction because the only person who refuses to go under oath before the United States Senate to talk about the allegation is Ford herself. Contrary to the spin Democrats are putting forward (another sign the claim is fiction) the Senate Judiciary Committee offered to let Ford testify in public or private or even to have interviewers go to her privately in California. She refused all such offers only days after saying she looked forward to testifying. Now Ford echoes the Democrats in saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation must conduct an investigation. The FBI has investigated Kavanaugh six times for various positions in the federal government including his current position as a life-tenured federal appellate court judge. In none of those six investigations has an allegation about assault turned up. Should they investigate again what would they learn? They would learn that a Bernie Sanders donor whos sympathetic to leftwing politics is now accusing a potential Supreme Court pick of sexual assault but has no witnesses and cannot remember the year or location of the assault. Of those she names as witnesses they all deny it. This is not her word versus Kavanaughs. It is her word versus that of everyone she has named as potential witnesses. How ones views Fords allegations is largely premised upon how one views abortion. The entire reason this became an issue is because the progressive left fears Kavanaugh would vote to overturn their beloved Roe v. Wade. They tried fear and hysteria and waited until just before Kavanaughs confirmation vote to spring this trap. That again is another reason we can be sure this is fiction. If you or I or any member of Congress had received a claim of sexual assault by a Supreme Court nominee we would undoubtedly make sure the appropriate authorities were informed. But Democrats learned about this two months ago and did nothing. They did not find it credible. So they held onto it as an insurance policy and only sprang the trap when they had no other way to stop Kavanaugh. Christine Ford may have been assaulted. But to wait until days before Brett Kavanaughs confirmation vote -- over 35 years after the incident -- to suddenly blame him is not credible.