Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,36
teams. The narrative Feinstein needed to build would have to turn him into a beer-guzzling college frat boy who forces himself on unsuspecting innocents.
A letter to Chairman Grassley from Senate Democrats dated August 24, 2018, cited “unprecedented lack of transparency” as justification to delay the hearings slated for the following week. Yet even as Feinstein and colleagues were demanding transparency, they themselves were holding back information Feinstein would later describe as critical to the nomination. “From the outset,” she would later say, “I have believed these allegations were extremely serious and bear heavily on Judge Kavanaugh’s character.” If that is true, her failure to produce that evidence at the appropriate time was a significant departure from standard investigative procedure and an indication that fact-finding was not her priority.
When news of the allegations finally dropped, it didn’t come from Feinstein, who had briefed committee Democrats days after the Kavanaugh hearings concluded but chose to keep Republicans in the dark. Once again, this was a departure from the way such investigations typically operate, particularly when a committee believes there is a sexual assault victim to protect.
Details about the allegations leaked out slowly (some might say strategically) starting with a September 12 Intercept story the same day Feinstein briefed committee Democrats. The first story only described the existence of a document, but reported that the content was unclear. More details dribbled out in a New York Times story the next day suggesting the incident involved sexual misconduct and then a New Yorker article a day later that suggested an assault by Kavanaugh. Two days later, Chairman Grassley learned of the identity of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey-Ford from the Washington Post. The coordinated rollout was now a full-scale public relations offensive.
I have worked with investigations that involved victims of sexual assault. They require great sensitivity and discretion. Never have I seen a witness treated the way Ford was treated by committee Democrats and by her own lawyers. To them, she seemed to be more of a political commodity than a human being.
The response from Blasey-Ford’s lawyers to Senate Judiciary Committee efforts to investigate seemed calculated to maximize the drama rather than to expose the truth or protect the witness.
According to the Senate Judiciary Committee memo released after the whole process concluded, Dr. Ford’s attorneys refused all committee requests for an interview with their client, either in California or in Washington, missed deadlines to respond, and delayed the investigation. When they finally did respond, they insisted on controlling the “number of witnesses, the order of witnesses, the number of cameras, the specific reporters and media outlets granted access, Justice Kavanaugh’s location during Dr. Ford’s testimony, and the Committee’s manner of questioning Dr. Ford.” Breaking with another Senate norm, the committee accommodated many of those requests. Despite those great efforts, Ford’s attorneys refused to turn over evidence they claimed was in their possession—specifically polygraphs, videos of the polygraph examination, and therapy notes Dr. Ford claimed would substantiate her story.
For a witness to make such an incredible claim and then refuse to produce evidence she uses to support that claim was unusual. In my experience, witnesses are anxious to document their claims. Not Dr. Ford—if you believe her lawyers.
We later learned that Dr. Ford’s attorney was a Democrat activist and self-proclaimed member of the resistance movement who had been recommended by none other than Senator Feinstein. Was Senator Feinstein coordinating with the witness and her legal team prior to the testimony? If so, that behavior would be far outside the norm for congressional investigations.
Rather than conduct an investigation using Democratic investigative staff, Senator Feinstein chose to believe Dr. Ford sans evidence proving her claims. She leaned on the earlier FBI investigation—perhaps because she could be critical of an FBI investigation rather than an investigation by her staff.
Meanwhile, Feinstein criticized GOP senators in an October 5 statement, saying, “They refused to gather evidence or do an impartial investigation into [Dr. Ford’s] allegations.” In contrast to Feinstein’s complete failure to investigate, Senate Republicans included in their memorandum on the investigation an exhaustive list of the forty-five witnesses they spoke with and the twenty-five written statements they collected in their effort to validate the claims of Dr. Ford. They concluded, “Committee investigators found no verifiable evidence that supported Dr. Ford’s allegations against Justice Kavanaugh. The witnesses that Dr. Ford identified as individuals who could corroborate her allegations failed to do so, and in fact, contradicted her.”
Feinstein instead tried to argue that the FBI, not the Republican committee staff, should investigate