The one-year anniversary of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee is almost upon us, and her attorney, Debra Katz, is at it again.
I don’t mean that Katz is once again engaging in politically motivated slander of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Though she is. That’s just par for the course. What’s more surprising is that Katz, who is supposed to be one of the nation’s top lawyers, is once again giving her and her client’s whole sickening game away.
Behind all of Blasey Ford’s lies about that infamous house party 35 years ago, about which even her own witnesses swore to have no memory, stands one great, all-encompassing background lie: that her motivation for going public with her accusations against Kavanaugh three-and-a-half decades after the alleged fact had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with politics. We’re all supposed to believe that Ford’s behavior would have been no different had Kavanaugh’s judicial and personal philosophies been more congenial to Planned Parenthood.
Earlier this month, however, the Daily Caller unearthed video of Katz asserting something that’s supposed to be an unthinkable affront to the traumatized feminine victimhood schtick her client used so successfully as protective armor. According to Katz, “part of what motivated” Blasey Ford to make her claims was the idea that Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court was a threat to Roe v. Wade’s standing as law of the land.
Katz’s Prior Blunder
This isn’t the first time that Katz has betrayed her not-quite-ready-for-prime-time mind. A year ago, when Blasey Ford and she were actively inflicting their malevolent charade on the nation, Katz was also scheduled to host a fundraiser for Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). Katz was forced to cancel the event when even CNN couldn’t ignore the obvious conflict of interest.
Katz’s attempt to quell conjecture that she was too invested in the Democratic Party and its goal of blocking Kavanaugh’s nomination to properly represent Ford was so unconvincing that, besides completely confirming people’s suspicions, she raised additional worries about her intellect.
“The short answer is this: We did a fundraiser for Senator Baldwin six years ago when she ran for the Senate, we supported her then,” Katz said.
It’s tough to understand why Katz thought her prior fundraiser for Baldwin was exculpatory since it provides more evidence of her allegiance to the Democratic Party, not less. Evidently, we were supposed to take her previous work on Baldwin’s behalf as indication that she embarked on the later fundraiser out of some sort of unconscious habit, like picking the leftmost brand of laundry detergent on the supermarket shelf, rather than out of any strong fealty to the Democrats. Whatever was behind her bizarre response, if you ever find yourself on trial for murder, probably best to find another lawyer since Katz might very well have you confess to several past murders in order to clear your name.
The rest of Katz’s response, however, in which she neglected to so much as obliquely allude to Blasey Ford even when explicitly trying to convince people that she could be trusted to act on her behalf, proved her to be more oblivious to her client’s interests than even her worst critics could have imagined.
Almost unbelievably, to allay suspicion that she was more concerned about Kavanaugh’s confirmation than keeping Christine Blasey Ford out of legal jeopardy, Katz added: “We are not going to be doing a fundraiser now. We’re going to be focused on the issues involving the Kavanaugh confirmation process.”
More Troubling Conflicts of Interest
Given the mental prowess Katz failed to display when questioned about her evident conflict of interest, it’s perhaps not surprising that Blasey Ford had a second lawyer named Michael Bromwich also by her side officially while she testified. And, when it came time for the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Blasey Ford, we learned that both were working pro bono.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking Katz and Bromwich were doing their client any favors. Though technically Ford’s legal counsel, the only people present that day it would have made any sense for Katz or Bromwich to bill were the Democratic Senators seated across the room, since it was obviously their interests being represented.
Under questioning before the committee, Blasey Ford testified that Katz was recommended to her by none other than its ranking Democratic member, Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.). That fact alone should be enough to raise doubts about whom Katz was really representing.
Blasey Ford’s other attorney, Bromwich, was even less likely than Katz to be focused on anything other than stopping Trump from getting another nominee on the Supreme Court. His Twitter feed is an unending stream of relentless, bad-faith bitterness toward Donald Trump and his administration. Bromwich was already representing disgraced FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe when he signed on with Blasey Ford.
Bromwich has been member of the Democratic Party’s elite for decades, having prosecuted Oliver North during the 1980s as part of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh’s investigation into the Iran-Contra affair. He initially was successful until all his guilty verdicts against North were tossed out on appeal. All charges were subsequently dropped. But since abject failure seems to be a résumé enhancer in Washington, Bromwich went on to become inspector general at Bill Clinton’s Justice Department, and later head of the newly created Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under Barack Obama.
It would seriously understate the perverse level of impropriety involved to say that Ford’s attorneys’ interests were conflicted. Both are loyal Democratic operatives who chose to represent Ford pro bono because they saw a chance to stop a conservative jurist nominated by Donald Trump from taking a seat on the Supreme Court. And nobody in the legal profession said a peep, underscoring why “legal ethics” is an oxymoron.
A Little Perjury
Senator Tom Tillis (R-N.C.) has suggested that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh might warrant some investigation in light of what Katz let slip about Ford’s motives, asserting that it “does seem to undermine what we all believed was a legitimate traumatic experience in [Blasey Ford’s] life.”
It’s not clear whose intelligence Tillis is insulting by including them in that “we.” Blasey Ford’s repeated perjury was exposed almost in real-time during her despicable performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.
There was, for example, the globe-trotting professor’s risible claim to be afraid of flying in what appeared to be an early attempt to delay or completely forestall testifying in Washington. Ford’s extensive world traveling for work and sundry tropical vacations made confirmation of her mendacity unnecessary, but a former boyfriend verified it in a sworn statement.
According to the ex-boyfriend, whose name was redacted, the two were friends for two years and then a couple for six more, living together for part of that time. He ended the relationship after he discovered Blasey Ford was unfaithful. She also made $600 worth of unauthorized charges on his credit card and lied about it until he threatened to report her to the police.
The Senate received her ex-boyfriend’s sworn statement four days before the full vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Yet none of his testimony found its way into the floor debate. Republican members persisted in maintaining the preposterous idea that, as Andrew McCarthy put it,
Professor Ford is completely earnest, that she was undeniably subjected to a harrowing sexual assault, but that she has somehow misidentified her assailant—notwithstanding that she says she knew who Kavanaugh was before the attack and is “100 percent” certain he is the culprit.
Senate Republicans were still playing by the bizarre rules whereby their Democratic colleagues were permitted to humiliate Kavanaugh by questioning him about the most intimate details of his personal life and then suggesting he was lying when he failed to give the sordid, self-condemning answers they sought. Meanwhile, Blasey Ford was given a woman’s Victorian-era immunity from suffering any aspersions to her character or discussing anything that might be too embarrassing.
The absurd and sickening rules of play also forbade even mentioning, let alone emphasizing, that her ex-boyfriend also attested to having never seen any evidence of Ford’s much-publicized fear of enclosed spaces. According to his statement, her supposed claustrophobia didn’t even come up when he helped her find a place to live that resulted in her renting a 500-square-foot house with one entrance. That indicates Blasey Ford’s story about the psychological trauma Kavanaugh inflicted on her and the reason for installing a second door in her Palo Alto home were rubbish.
Ford’s claim that anyone would have been perplexed by a desire to install a second door in a Palo Alto home was more patent nonsense. The astronomically high cost of Silicon Valley real estate means such renovations can be used to make a substantial extra income by renting out a separate space in one’s home; something she appears to have done. She neglected to mention that the renovations also included two new rooms and a bathroom.
That’s just a taste of the blatant lies Ford told the nation while under oath. So, there’s something comical about Tillis suddenly conceding that maybe Blasey Ford’s testimony deserves a second look because her attorney admitted something that anyone with a functioning brain intuited from the get-go. Republicans are nothing if not slow learners.
But, better late than never. Let’s hope the senator is serious and not just saying what he thinks Republican voters want to hear. Let’s hope that he really does make an effort to see that Christine Blasey Ford finally is investigated and that she winds up doing time for the ordeal her repeated and systematic perjury put Brett Kavanaugh, his family, and the nation through. It would also be nice if everyone on her team of attorneys was investigated for the appalling conflicts of interest that seemingly caused them to allow a client to perjure herself before the nation, since it’s difficult to believe they had no clue Blasey Ford was lying.
Well, except maybe poor Debra Katz, who doesn’t seem to be the sharpest tool in the legal shed.