If you believe the national skews media, the Rankest Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, is refusing to let Committee Chairman Charles Grassley see the original Kavanaugh letter from Christine Blasey Ford.
Why not? Supposedly that is the letter that has launched the current phase of the “intergalactic freakshow” known as the Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing. As far as we know, the letter is the best evidence of the collective thoughts of Christine Blasey Ford (and no one else) about Brett Kavanaugh’s suitability to be an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.
Why doesn’t Feinstein want to hand over the original letter to Grassley? Very likely it’s because Grassley would want to know every detail of the letter’s provenance. He would quite properly want the letter authenticated. That is important because the original letter “locks in” Ford to the information in the letter.
That letter is represented to be the original work of Christine Blasey Ford, a present-day writing of her recollection of an alleged incident that occurred in 1982 involving Kavanaugh and her. Presumably that letter contains all the relevant information in her recollection of the alleged incident. So for her to suddenly now in September 2018 remember some highly relevant detail from 1982 that isn’t in the letter would be highly suspicious.
Among others, she should be asked these questions under oath and under penalty of perjury:
- Did you write and send this letter on your own initiative? With whom did you discuss writing and sending a letter concerning Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination before doing it?
- Confirm that these were your words and and ideas only rather than the words of any second party such as attorneys Debra Katz or Lisa Banks, Representative Anna Eshoo or her staff, or Senator Dianne Feinstein or her staff.
- Were prior versons of this letter prepared and then modified in any way or even completely rewritten after consultation with any other parties such as Eshoo, Feinstein, Katz, Banks, etc.? Identify all persons with whom you discussed this letter before preparing and sending this (original) version.
The purpose of Grassley’s reasonable demand for truthful answers to those questions is to reassure the Judiciary Committee that Ford’s testimony is based only on her own personal knowledge and belief of the incident as it occurred in 1982.
Asking those questions of Ford under oath gives her the opportunity to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in her own words, not the words of some attorney or political hack or staffer or polygraph examiner. If someone has applied either subtle or coercive outside influence on Ford to get her to testi-lie under oath before the Judiciary Committee, she needs to reveal that to avoid committing perjury and to keep her own and Judge Kavanaugh’s reputations intact.