In today’s episode of the Washington, DC, soap opera entitled “As the Barstool Spins,” we learn that Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford has been receiving violent threats. According to a post in TheHill.com, “[Ford] has been the target of vicious harassment and even death threats. As a result of these kind of threats, her family was forced to relocate out of their home. Her email has been hacked, and she has been impersonated online.”
TheHill.com blog post goes on to say that, “Ford’s lawyers said in the letter that she would not testify during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing set for Monday until the FBI investigates her allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh.”
I don’t get it.
Even if the FBI had the legal jurisdiction to open such an investigation (it doesn’t), how exactly would the FBI investigating her allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school in 1982 make the threats stop? The FBI would be investigating very stale 1982 leads of a crime that would never be prosecuted, not the 2018 threats reportedly being made against Ford.
Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee would be limited to matters of her own personal knowledge, not the results of any FBI (or anyone else’s) investigation.
My opinion is that the letter from Ford’s lawyers, Katz and Banks, demanding a FBI investigation in return for Ford’s testimony is nothing more than another effort delay the vote to confirm or reject Kavanaugh’s appointment. That strategy seems contrary to their client’s and her family’s safety interests. It seems to me that the quicker Kavanaugh is confirmed or rejected, the sooner any threat made or posed to Ford and her family loses its potency. Ford’s attorneys ought to be trying to expedite her testimony’s completion rather than delay its commencement.
If Ford’s lawyers, Katz and Banks, are sincerely concerned about threats against Ford and her family, they need to be coordinating with the appropriate California law enforcement agencies who do have jurisdiction over threats of violence, extortion, stalking, witness intimidation, etc.
The FBI should very politely hand attorneys Debra Katz and Lisa Banks a bucket of sand and tell them to go pound it.