The final Senate report from Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor who interviewed Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford, questions Blasey Ford’s “struggle to recall important recent events” such as whether she took her polygraph test the same day as her grandmother’s funeral.
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Blasey Ford — the California professor who brought forth an allegation of teenage sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — said she did not know whether her polygraph examination less than two months ago occurred on the same day her grandmother was buried. This discrepancy is listed among nine categories of strikes against Blasey Ford’s testimony which led Mitchell to conclude her account did not meet the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.
When asked why Jerry Hanafin, the polygraph administrator, conducted the examination at a hotel near the Baltimore–Washington International Airport, instead of his Virginia office, Ford revealed time constraints left her unable to travel far for the test.
“I had left my grandmother’s funeral at that point at Fort Lincoln Cemetery that day and I was on a tight scheduled to get to make a plane to Manchester, New Hampshire,” the 51-year-old professor told Mitchell. “He was willing to come to me, which was appreciated.”
“So you were administered a polygraph on the day that you attended your grandmother’s funeral?” Mitchell asked.
“Correct, or it might have been the next day,” Ford responded.
She then turned to her attorney, Debra Katz, and said she did not remember the exact day the test was taken.
“Dr. Ford could not remember if she was being audio- or video-recorded when she took the polygraph,” the memo reads. “And she could not remember whether the polygraph occurred the same day as her grandmother’s funeral or the day after her grandmother’s funeral.”
According to Mitchell, administering a polygraph to an individual who is “grieving” is “inappropriate.”
As Breitbart News has previously reported, Blasey Ford was only asked two broad questions during her polygraph exam: “Is any part of your statement false?” and “Did you make up any part of your statement?”
“Ford was not asked any specific questions about the specific allegation,” Breitbart’s John Nolte pointed out — no questions to name Kavanaugh as her attacker or about the details of her story. “There are also no test or baseline questions where the subject is intentionally asked to lie.”
The memo’s release comes after the White House ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to launch a week-long investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh, a request made by Jeff Flake (R-AZ) moments before the committee was slated to vote that Kavanaugh’s confirmation be sent to the full Senate for a vote.
”I think it would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to but not more than one week in order to let the FBI do an investigation, limited in time and scope to the current allegations that are there, limited in time to no more than one week,” Flake said. “And I will vote to advance the bill to the floor with that understanding.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would announce hours later that President Donald Trump would accommodate the request and asked the FBI to probe the claims. “I’ve ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file,” President Trump said in a statement. “As the Senate has requested, this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week.”
In a separate statement released through the White House, Kavanaugh said he stood ready to cooperate in the investigation. “Throughout this process, I’ve been interviewed by the FBI, I’ve done a number of ‘background’ calls directly with the Senate, and yesterday, I answered questions under oath about every topic the Senators and their counsel asked me,” said Kavanaugh. “I’ve done everything they have requested and will continue to cooperate.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.