The Other Girl in the Kavanaugh Story Whatever the FBI learns, the free press has a job to do. By James Freeman
The unquestioned conventional wisdom in Washington these days is that suburban female voters will overwhelmingly reject Republicans in November elections and that the controversy over Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be a contributing factor. But perhaps many of these voters would first like to know what happened to two particular suburban females in the 1980s.
It won’t be easy to find out, because most professional journalists seem to have lost interest in trying to ascertain whether Professor Christine Blasey Ford’s compelling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was accurate. Judging by recent coverage, much of the press corps is now endlessly fascinated by demands for a broader investigation of her allegation of attempted rape by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh but largely uninterested in the emerging evidence.
For example, most reporters don’t seem to have noticed that the woman who was the other teenage girl allegedly attending the party described by Professor Ford still isn’t backing her story. CBS News mentioned in the fifth paragraph of a story last night:
An attorney who represents Leland Keyser, who Ford said was at the house that night, told CBS News Keyser met with the FBI on Saturday. Through the attorney, Howard Walsh, Keyser has said she does not refute Ford’s account but that she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where Kavanaugh was present, with or without Ford.
Today Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reports:
Leland Keyser, the high school friend Christine Blasey Ford counted on to corroborate her sexual assault charges, has told the FBI she has no knowledge of the supposed 1982 party or the accused, Brett Kavanaugh.
Howard J. Walsh III, her attorney, told The Washington Times that she met with the FBI on Saturday.
Asked if she had repeated the same two statements she provided the Senate Judiciary Committee, the lawyer answered, “yes.”
Sex-crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell reported to Republican senators on the inconsistencies in the evolving story from Professor Ford and specifically noted two statements that her lifelong friend provided to the Judiciary Committee:
Ms. Keyser stated through counsel that, “[s]imply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.” In a subsequent statement to the Committee through counsel, Ms. Keyser said that “the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford’s allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.”
Ms. Mitchell also noted another relevant part of the professor’s testimony:
Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.
Professor Ford has reasonably made the argument that being assaulted would have made the evening much more memorable to her than to anyone else. But she’s also describing a chain of events that ought to have made an impression upon her friend. Perhaps the FBI is now exploring why a 15-year-old Leland Keyser, surprised to learn that she was the only girl at a party with older boys, would not have asked her friend at some point why she left without a word. It’s important to emphasize here that this is not a question of whether Ms. Keyser would remember such communication more than three decades later. Professor Ford testified that such communication never occurred.
One could argue that given that Ms. Keyser’s story hasn’t changed since her statements delivered by her lawyer to the committee, this is not news. But the whole premise of the new government investigation is that such statements are insufficient and that witnesses must be interviewed by FBI agents.
There is also of course an argument in this era that those alleging sexual assault should be believed, but Professor Ford will have difficulty arguing at this point that her account should not be questioned. That’s because her legal team has repeatedly demanded that she be questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Perhaps raising again the issue of whose interests her attorneys are really serving, the Ford team has been public in its call for further examination of the events she’s described. “NEW: FBI has not responded to requests from Christine Blasey Ford to do an interview. “We have not heard from the FBI, despite repeated efforts to speak with them,” her lawyer, Debra S. Katz, told me, when asked,” tweeted New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg on Sunday.
Whatever the government does, there seems to be a job here for reporters as well in trying to discover more facts about what did or did not happen in a house in suburban Maryland in the 1980s. But good luck getting the press corps to focus on the alleged sexual assault when reporters are on the hunt for evidence of drunken ice-tossing.
The bet here is that suburban women, just like people in every other demographic group, want evidence to evaluate the Ford claim.
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