Uh, Dr. Ford, About That Trip to the Safeway

© Jack Cashill
October 10, 2018 - WND.com

This Washington Post headline, “Mark Judge’s book validates Christine Blasey Ford’s timeline of the alleged Kavanaugh assault,”reminds us that there appear to be no real reporters left in the major media.

Real reporters would not be investigating Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s high school history. They would be investigating the orchestration of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Post reporter who wrote the article cited above, Philip Bump, has actually stumbled on the case’s smoking gun. Intentionally or otherwise, he manages to get everything exactly backwards.

Bump quotes Ford as telling the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I did see Mark Judge once at the Potomac Village Safeway after the time of the attack, and it would be helpful with anyone’s resources if — to figure out when he worked there if people are wanting more details from me about when the attack occurred.”

Now Bump announces his Eureka moment. He can pinpoint Ford’s timeline thanks to Mark Judge himself.

Bump quotes from Judge’s 1997 book “Wasted.” Judge wrote, “It was the summer before senior year, and by now, even though I wasn’t drinking every day, I was completely hooked.” That summer was 1982.

Bump adds more detail, quoting from Judge on how his drinking began to interfere with his work.

“My job was simple. People would leave their grocery baskets against a rail in front of the store, then pull their cars around. I would then sling their groceries in the car, sometimes get a small tip, and then wait for the next car.”

Bump then turns back to Ford and quotes her response to a question from Sen. Dick Durbin, “I was going to the Potomac Village Safeway, this is the one on the corner of Falls and River Road.”  Impressively, Ford remembered the exact job Judge was doing.

“And I was with my mother and I was a teenager, so I wanted her to go in one door and me the other. I chose the wrong door because the door I chose was the one where Mark Judge — it looked like he was working there and arranging the shopping carts.”

Ford told Durbin the encounter took place six to eight weeks after Judge served as accomplice to an attempted rape by Kavanaugh.

Having assessed the evidence, including Kavanaugh’s calendar, Bump concludes, “Judge’s book not only suggests that the summer of 1982 was probably the period during which the alleged incident occurred but also makes the likelihood that [Kavanaugh] was heavily intoxicated — as Ford has claimed — greater.”

This is embarrassing. Had Bump paid any attention to the hearing, he would have understood the problems in Ford’s testimony elicited by sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell.

The Washington Post published Mitchell’s report three days after Bump’s article. https://wapo.st/2IuhO2j As Mitchell noted, Ford’s original July 6 text to the Washington Post cited the attack as having happened in the “mid 1980s.”

On September 16, as reported by the Post, notes from a 2013 individual therapy session have Ford saying the attack occurred during her “late teens.” Ford was 15 in 1982. She was in her late teens in the “mid 1980s.”

Concludes Mitchell diplomatically, “While it is common for victims to be uncertain about dates, Dr. Ford failed to explain how she was suddenly able to narrow the timeframe to a particular season and particular year.”

The reason for Ford’s memory revival should have been obvious to every serious reporter. Sometime after her July 6 text to the Post, Ford and her allies got their hands on “Wasted.”

It seems highly likely Ford and her allies made Judge an active participant in the alleged assault because his book left him—and Kavanaugh by extension--vulnerable to that accusation.

That Ford could not remember how she got home after being assaulted but could remember “going to the Potomac Village Safeway . . . the one on the corner of Falls and River Road” should have blown open the whole charade.

Bump posted his article on September 27, the day of the hearing. He obviously had a copy of “Wasted.” So did the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

If they had it, Ford surely did too. When she asked in her little girl voice about “resources” that could help her pinpoint the time of the Safeway encounter, she was knew exactly what the resource was.

The available evidence suggests it was all a set-up. In the mid-1980’s, when she was in her “late teens,” Ford suffered an attack very much like the one she described. She “does not remember” how she got home because she drove home.

As in the case of Clarence Thomas, activists started desperately looking for a sympathetic female who could derail a conservative nominee with a tale of sexual impropriety. The scrubbing of Ford’s social media accounts suggests she would have been a willing participant.

As Anita Hill appears to have done, Ford took a real incident and falsely put the nominee into the picture as sexual predator. The other details were likely real in either case and resonated, especially with females.

As with Anita Hill, Ford appears to have been genuine in her desire to stop the nomination without having to come forward herself.

Given the involvement of former FBI agents in crafting Ford’s story and prodding her forward, the intrigue goes deep, too deep for a citizen journalist.

Reporters at the Post and New York Times get their phone calls answered. They have no excuse for not making the right ones.