and Hill staffer wishes they had the button to open the trap door under Rachel Mitchell’s chair. What a total and complete political disaster for Republicans.”19
Media analysts were dazzled by Ford’s professional explanations of how memory works. When Senator Feinstein asked her how she could be so sure it was Kavanaugh who attacked her, she answered, “The same way that I’m sure that I’m talking to you right now. Just basic memory functions and also just the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in the brain that, as you know, encodes that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus, and so the trauma-related experience is locked there, whereas other details kind of drift.” When Senator Leahy asked what her strongest memory was, she replied, “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two, and they’re having fun at my expense.”
Ford’s displays of professional expertise alternated with expressions of childlike ignorance. In her opening statement, she professed that she had not known how to reach her senator, so she had called her representative’s office and the Washington Post instead. In response to a question from Senator Whitehouse, she said she didn’t know what “exculpatory” meant. He explained it referred to evidence helpful to the accused.
No matter what Ford said, the media lapped it up. Mimi Rocah, a legal analyst for MSNBC, observed that trial lawyers usually supplement the victim’s testimony with that of experts who can expand on the victim’s statements and explain any gaps in memory. But Ford, she said, was “everything bottled up in one. She’s really good at both [roles].” Rocah hoped that Mark Judge, who had previously said, under penalty of felony, that he had no memory of Kavanaugh’s acting the way Ford described, would “have a moment of conscience where he needs to tell the truth.”20
A former U.S. attorney, Joyce Vance, confident of Kavanaugh’s guilt, agreed. Judge needed to testify under oath—presumably because his previous statement, which was subject to the same penalty as perjury, was somehow less reliable. If he were to testify, she wondered, “Does he go ahead and confirm his friend’s version of events? Or does he finally complete the outreach that Dr. Ford tried to make with him during this event, where she says she locked eyes with him and thought he might help her. You know, will he finally, from across the years, come forth and tell the story and achieve some kind of redemption for what he did?”21
The Republican consultant Schmidt seemed to be in agony, tweeting: “The GOP members are putting on a clinic for political cowardice. Will not one of them, while watching a hectoring and minimally prepared Rachel Mitchell harass Dr. Ford, step up and take back their time and denounce this kangaroo court?”22 The absurdity of this characterization of Mitchell’s questioning was best demonstrated, fittingly enough, by a Saturday Night Live parody two nights later, in which a mild-mannered Mitchell is repeatedly cut off in the middle of a lengthy and methodically worded sentence by the expiration of her five minutes.23 The predominant criticism of Mitchell, especially from the right, was that she was too deferential to Ford and that her questioning was meandering and unfocused.
In the next round of questions, Ford’s lawyers admitted that they had paid for the polygraph. When Ford was asked who helped her work with Senate offices, she seemed confused. She did admit that Feinstein had recommended that she work with Debra Katz’s law firm.
It was no surprise that Feinstein’s office would recommend Katz. She had been considered one of the best litigators of sexual harassment claims for decades. But they also knew that Katz, a longtime Democratic donor and fundraiser, would be on their team politically. She represented the Feminist Majority Foundation—another beneficiary of the Arabella dark-money empire.24 And her feelings about the Trump administration were less than sympathetic: “These people are all miscreants,” she fumed on Facebook in March 2017. “The term ‘basket of deplorables’ is far too generous a description for these people who are now Senior Trump advisors.”25 Katz was the perfect person for the job.
Mitchell asked whether Leland Keyser had ever asked Ford why she had left the party so suddenly. She said she had not. Keyser, of course, had already said that she had no recollection of the party Ford described. Ford now suggested that Keyser’s denial was tied to “significant health challenges,” adding that she was “happy that she’s focusing on herself and getting the health treatment that she needs.”