Don’t Pretend the Kavanaugh Facts are Unknowable
The strangest thing to me about Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing was that the veteran prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, retained by the Republicans to cross-examine Christine Blasey Ford, didn’t already have, and seemed uninterested in obtaining, a crucial piece of evidence that Ford referred to in her testimony.
Ford does not recall precisely what date Brett Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her, but she testified that approximately six weeks afterward she saw Mark Judge—who she claims was in the room during the assault—working at the Potomac Village Safeway. “If we could find out when he worked there, then I could provide a more detailed timeline,” Ford said. That would be an important fact, indeed.
Mitchell has been prosecuting sexual-assault cases for two decades. She knows how to use determinable contextual facts to nail down a precise chronology about a witness’s narrative. The facts surrounding Judge’s employment at Safeway are objective, documented, and readily ascertainable, and would provide a definitive date range for
