Kavanaugh accused of sexually assaulting classmate in high school

[brucejoel99]

With the possibility of Kavanaugh withdrawing his nomination in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford's letter accusing him of rape and sexual assault, who do you see Trump pick to fill Kennedy's seat? I'd say either Coney Barrett, Kethledge, or Hardiman.

https://twitter.com/JGibsonDem/status/1041502935383982080

Given the context of how this hypothetical withdrawal would be occurring, it has to be Barrett... call it the Al Franken/Tina Smith precedent

[brucejoel99]

What do you guys think the odds are that the nomination is withdrawn/rescinded?

I think he either he gets confirmed ASAP (i.e. prior to October, on schedule, w/ the Judiciary Committee vote occurring this Thursday, & the full Senate vote soon after) or not at all.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1041696688942010373

[brucejoel99]

Maybe this will turn out to the be the "Duke Lacrosse" case of the #MeToo movement.

(That is, assuming that CBF's allegations will continue to fail under increased scrutiny).

CBF allegations are robustly holding up to increased scrutiny.

I don't know what there is to hold up given 1) no corroborating evidence to support her allegations and 2) possible motives for Ford to want to discredit Kavanaugh and prevent him from taking a seat on the Court.

Maybe this will turn out to the be the "Duke Lacrosse" case of the #MeToo movement.

(That is, assuming that CBF's allegations will continue to fail under increased scrutiny).

? Nothing has been disproven in her testimony yet. Im pretty sure you just think that they dont hold up.

Under increased scrutiny, the inconsistences in her allegations,  the lack of evidence to support her allegations, and her possible motives in wanting to discredit Kavanaugh are all becoming more widely known.

The context surrounding Ford's story clearly is evidence. Its corroborating evidence is that she told her therapist 6 years ago. That therapist made notes, & could testify if asked to do so.  What we have right now is enough for a Senator to vote no, b/c the evidentiary standard for SCOTUS nominees isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt". It's a lifetime SCOTUS seat; a whiff of impropriety should be too much. Even if your point is absent corroboration, just stop (for all intents & purposes) insulting & ignoring this accusation just b/c it doesn't fit your political preference (as Democrats mostly did re: Al Franken & Republicans mostly failed to do re: Roy Moore).

[brucejoel99]

I recruited a bunch of other Maryland Daily Kos users to join me in sending an email to Brian Frosh asking him to prosecute Kavanaugh.

Any good prosecutor doesn't base decisions of whether to prosecute an individual for a crime on public opinion.

[brucejoel99]

Maybe this will turn out to the be the "Duke Lacrosse" case of the #MeToo movement.

(That is, assuming that CBF's allegations will continue to fail under increased scrutiny).

CBF allegations are robustly holding up to increased scrutiny.

I don't know what there is to hold up given 1) no corroborating evidence to support her allegations and 2) possible motives for Ford to want to discredit Kavanaugh and prevent him from taking a seat on the Court.

Maybe this will turn out to the be the "Duke Lacrosse" case of the #MeToo movement.

(That is, assuming that CBF's allegations will continue to fail under increased scrutiny).

? Nothing has been disproven in her testimony yet. Im pretty sure you just think that they dont hold up.

Under increased scrutiny, the inconsistences in her allegations,  the lack of evidence to support her allegations, and her possible motives in wanting to discredit Kavanaugh are all becoming more widely known.

The context surrounding Ford's story clearly is evidence. Its corroborating evidence is that she told her therapist 6 years ago. That therapist made notes, & could testify if asked to do so.  What we have right now is enough for a Senator to vote no, b/c the evidentiary standard for SCOTUS nominees isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt". It's a lifetime SCOTUS seat; a whiff of impropriety should be too much. Even if your point is absent corroboration, just stop (for all intents & purposes) insulting & ignoring this accusation just b/c it doesn't fit your political preference (as Democrats mostly did re: Al Franken & Republicans mostly failed to do re: Roy Moore).

Brett Kavanaugh is never indicated as the assailant in the therapist's notes, so I fail to see the notes as corroborating evidence to Ford's allegations.

How a senator should vote on this matter is really a political issue and not a moral one.  There are no evidentiary standards for these types of allegations concerning a SCOTUS nomination, so the Republican majority is free to take them with a grain of salt (as they should, because there's no evidence corroborating them).

I'm not insulting or ignoring an allegation.  The allegation would be very serious and the withdrawal of Kavanaugh's nomination would be warranted if there was more corroborating evidence to support Ford's testimony.  The allegations regarding Roy Moore and Al Franken were much more substantiated than these.  

You can judge for yourself what is/isn't corroborating evidence but it seems pretty clear that all of this is sufficient so as to ensure that the claim shouldn't be ignored due to the various amounts of supporting evidence, including the therapist's notes from 2012 (which say she reported that she was attacked by students "from an elitist boys' school" who went on to become "highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington"), the husband further corroborating the fact that this was brought up by name not just now but also in 2002 when she told him personally & in 2012 in the therapy sessions (who even recalled from the latter that his wife used Kavanaugh's last name & voiced concern that Kavanaugh, then a federal judge, might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court), & the polygraph.

How much weight one gives those is fairly a matter of judgement & degree, & reasonable opinions and evaluations about that may differ somewhat. But it's not reasonable to say that it carries no more weight than would an accusation made w/out any support of any kind; it's already more than just a pure case of "he said, she said." You can judge for yourself exactly how much more it is than that, but it is definitely something more than that.

Indeed, the very existence of all of the above evidence establishing a record of all this long before any of this circus occurring proves that this is, at the very least, something to look into. The only other alternative is she attended private therapy sessions with her husband & a therapist to lie about some guy from high school, all presumably out of the blue with no major motive. A person would have to be sick in the head to do all of that.

[brucejoel99]

FF

https://twitter.com/PhilBredesen/status/1041691934270660614

Oof, somebody get the Senate some ice for that sick burn!

[brucejoel99]

Ford has contributed to Democratic candidates, though not a large amount, and her parent's appeared before Kavanaugh's mother, who is also a judge(in the mid-1990's).  Either or both of these things could make Ford biased.

It doesn't mean that any of these people are biased, or that any are lying, but it does lower the value of their direct statements.

Yes, it lowers the value of her direct statement about being sexually assaulted by a very small amount, to an extent not even worth bothering with if not grasping at straws.

It may be a lot more than that. 

I would not take the position that because someone says something happened 35 years ago, it happened.  I would not take the position that because someone did not occur 35 years ago, that it occurred. 

We also have a problem that the notes from 2012 give a different account than the current one; maybe that can be explained. 

It has been: the notes say 4 boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist's part. Ford said there were 4 boys at the party but only 2 in the room.

[brucejoel99]

Under Maryland State law, he could still be prosecuted for (attempted) rape and sent to jail if state officials would be willing to prosecute him, because there is no statue of limitations for (attempted) rape in Maryland. I already sent a letter to Brian Frosh asking him to launch a prosecution, and have been trying to get other people to send similar letters.

Kavanaugh is clearly guilty, and would be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if the case got to the courtroom.

From the preponderance of evidence shown so far, there's nothing with which charges pressed against Kavanaugh could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt (& that analysis comes from somebody who thinks this preponderance of evidence is definitely more than enough to warrant a rejection of Kavanaugh's nomination).

And again, I still can't believe you think prosecutors ought to base decisions of whether to prosecute an individual for a crime on public opinion.