That crackling sound Joe Biden is hearing is not the Rice Crispies in his cereal bowl. It is the sound of ice slowly starting to give beneath his feet.
Two recent articles prompted this piece—one by Cathy Young and the other by Monica Hesse. Unsurprisingly, both Young and Hesse conclude that Christine Blasey Ford is more credible than Tara Reade. Unsurprisingly, I disagree.
It’s not complicated. By every imaginable measure, by any conceivable standard, Tara Reade’s allegation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her is far more credible than Ford’s.
Passage of Time
Given the passage of time, there is no possibility for a solid factual determination of what happened in either case. In Ford’s case, the event occurred (if it occurred at all) when both she and Brett Kavanaugh were teenagers, 36 years earlier.
Biden’s alleged assault on Reade occurred 27 years ago. Events that might have occurred 27 years ago between adults in a work setting, however, are easier to establish and remember than events that might have occurred 36 years ago between teenagers at a summer weekend party involving alcohol.
Thus, here Reade is a few points ahead of Ford in terms of credibility.
Knowing the Alleged Perpetrator
Many on the Left gloss over the fact that to this day no one has established that Kavanaugh and Ford actually knew each other or even met. In nearly 20 months, not a single journalist has produced one shred of evidence that Kavanaugh and Ford were ever even within one mile of each other. This should be an insurmountable stumbling block—but nothing will stop the partisans.
Young dismisses this difficulty with a breezy “it’s a fact that they traveled in the same social circles.” This sleight of hand raises its own questions. Is it a “fact,” and what, exactly, were their social circles?
Ford went to Holton-Arms School, which was not a Catholic prep school. Ford was also two years younger than Kavanaugh. A two-year age difference is nothing for adults—but it can mean a great deal to 17- and 15-year-olds. Kavanaugh was a rising senior in the summer of 1982—it is easier to see him socializing with rising seniors from nearby Catholic girls’ schools than with a 15-year-old rising sophomore from a relatively distant non-Catholic one.
Nor is it apparent that their social circles, however defined, were the same, or even that they overlapped much. Is it possible that they met somehow somewhere at some social function? It is not impossible—but Ford’s supporters bear the burden of proof on this. One must assume they have searched under every rock and tree, and came up dry.
Tara Reade, on the other hand, worked for Biden. It is clear, then, that they met, and met multiple times.
This factor is overwhelmingly in Reade’s favor.
Motivation
Blasey Ford’s motivation to lie was always clear—she is a committed Democratic partisan. There was good reason why she erased her entire social media trail before “coming forward.” There was good reason why she hired the particular set of lawyers who represented her. There was good reason why she contacted her congressional representative and then Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and not someone else. Blasey Ford surely understood the explosiveness of her allegations and their potential impact on the Kavanaugh confirmation. All her protestations to the contrary were bunk, and only highlight her dishonesty.
Deborah Katz, Ford’s lawyer, said last year:
[Kavanaugh] will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him. And that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.Young (and others) explain this inconvenient admission by arguing the audio quality is poor, and what Katz actually said was “That is part of what motivated Christine in discharging her civic duty.” (Italics added by Young.) But even if, arguendo, Katz said this, it changes nothing in our understanding of Ford’s motivation to lie—a partisan hit job on a conservative Supreme Court nominee, dressed up as a “civic duty,” is still a partisan hit job.
We should not forget the rage and the despair progressives felt at the prospect of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2018, or the lengths to which Democrats were willing to go to obstruct and sabotage it. What are a few more lies in the service of their greater cause?
For all the overwrought pathos from every Democratic senator on the Judiciary Committee about the supposed sacrifices Blasey Ford supposedly made in coming forward, she did alright for herself. She went from an obscure psychology professor to being a hero to the Left. She raised nearly $1 million for “personal security.” A memoir and many paid speeches surely await her. She is no victim for speaking out.
Now consider Tara Reade. She is a Democrat with no obvious motive to lie about the Democratic nominee. It is certainly not obvious what her motive to lie could have been in 1993 as she surely could not have anticipated Joe Biden would be her party’s nominee in 2020.
In sum, whatever one thinks of the ultimate truth of the allegations themselves, Blasey Ford had a clear and obvious partisan motive for lying, while Reade did not.
This factor, therefore, is also overwhelmingly in Reade’s favor.
Witnesses
Every single witness named by Blasey Ford contradicted her story in every detail and in all details. Blasey Ford’s friend Leland Keyser—who at the time of the confirmation hearings took the position that she supported Ford, but had no specific recollection of the events in question—now explicitly denies that the party described by Ford ever happened or that she ever met Kavanaugh.
Keyser is a Democrat. She could have stuck with “it might have happened, but I can’t recall the specifics, even though I believe Christine is telling what she believes is the truth.” But Blasey Ford’s friend (probably now a former friend) is unequivocal that the events Ford describes did not happen. Keep in mind that Leland Keyser was Blasey Ford’s sole “witness” as to whether she and Keyser had ever met Kavanaugh.
Blasey Ford’s parents did not attend the hearing when she testified. The media glossed over this—yet it is highly significant. The people who know Christine Blasey Ford better than anyone refused to lend their presence or name to the Kavanaugh hit job or to enhance their daughter’s credibility by being there. A strong inference is that they were torn between their love for their daughter and their own private certainty that her story is fabricated.
Tara Reade has five contemporaneous witnesses to whom she told her story, in varying degrees of detail.
Biden defenders often focus on the fact that she didn’t tell every detail to her brother. But it is silly to expect that she would have told all the gory details to every person in whom she confided, perhaps especially a brother. (Democrats certainly never applied this requirement to Blasey Ford.) How many women use sentences like “My Boss, Senator Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.), pinned me against the wall, pushed his hand under my dress, and then inserted a finger into my vagina” in conversations with their relatives and friends? Expecting this kind of specificity from every Reade witness 27 years later is absurd.
The substance of Reade’s story—as told to multiple people—has remained consistent all these years. No witness has come forward to contradict her. The best Biden could do was to trot out a few ex-staffers with “Joe Biden never did anything like that to me,” or “I never saw anything like that.”
This factor, therefore, is clearly in Reade’s favor.
Documentary Evidence
It is remarkable that in Blasey Ford’s case, there actually was documentary evidence. The problem for her was that Kavanaugh’s calendar from 1982 supports his version of the story—and contradicts Ford’s. It was not definitive proof, but it certainly raised additional questions about Blasey Ford’s story. It is something.
Blasey Ford had no documents (or anything else) in support of any detail of her story from 1982. She has refused to provide her psychiatrist’s notes from 30 years later. Could it be that those notes contain inconsistencies with her verbal testimony or other statements? Otherwise, why not produce them? At a minimum, Ford’s refusal raises questions about her overall credibility.
Documentary evidence in support of Tara Reade’s story is in Biden’s papers. We must make the logical inference from Biden’s refusal to open his records. Biden’s buddies at the University of Delaware are in charge of his archive—and are we certain we can trust them to produce relevant documents, and not destroy any inconvenient ones?
Hillary,AOC,Maxine Waters and the Wicken Witch of the West they big differences its the Witch has her flying monkies
whore dog billy raped and slept his fair share of women. billy use to take a car and drive to the house of his fling for the night. if he brought the woman to the wipe house he and slut hillary would argue on who got her first-true. ask any of the USSS in the wipe house at that time. Reade was RAPED
There is no comparison between the two, the evidence, the accusations or the reactions and exploitation by Democrats.
I like how there was a suggestion that Kavanaugh, though innocent, could have diffused the situation with a mock-apology, as if that would have assuaged the blood-lust frenzy the Democrats had worked themselves into. No, that would have thrown gasoline on the fire and, probably planned, led to further demands for him to, at the very least, publicly kill himself.
If only Democrats had the capacity to take a step back and look at their own ridiculous selves. Sadly, they lack that capability.