In evaluating the conflicting testimony between Dr. Ford and Judge Brett Kananaugh, people have been trying to read how earnest each was and how "believable" each seemed. This is the wrong approach. Rather than trying to judge how well they presented their case, we need to look at externals.
Years ago I was on a Duck tour of Plymouth, Ma. My daughter asked me if something the guide said was true. My answer was that the things I knew about were incorrect so I didn't trust the parts that I knew nothing about.
This is how I approach Dr. Ford's statements.
She claims that, while a teenager, Kavanaugh placed his hand over her mouth making her think that he'd kill her by accident and causing trauma that lasts through today. She said that the event is burned into her hippocampus.
The events she describes happened so long ago that it is impossible to prove or disprove with anything approaching certainty. But we can look at more recent events.
According to Dr. Ford, she has crippling claustrophobia caused by the attack. When she and her husband remodeled her house she insisted on having a second front door as an escape route from her living room. Her husband didn't understand the reasoning and loss of curb appeal. This lead to couple's counseling which is when she first revealed that she had been attacked.
But, records show that the house was remodeled in 2008 and she went to counseling in 2012 so the one did not directly lead to the other. Further, the extra door appears to have been installed so that the Fords could (and still do) rent out a spare room. And pictures of the Ford residence from Google Street View show that the extra door is not particularly visible so there is no affect on its curb appeal.
In other words, Dr. Ford wasn't being truthful.
Another supposed symptom of Dr. Ford's claustrophobia is her inability to fly. Her lawyer gave this as the reason that she could not appear before the Senate on September 24 - because she had to drive across the country.
But it turns out that she flies regularly. So that one is an outright lie.
She also told the Washington Post that she opposed President Trump because Kavanaugh was on the President's list of possible Supreme Court nominees and she did not want to live in a country where Kavanaugh was on the highest court. But that can't be true. Trump didn't add Kavanaugh to his list until a year after his inauguration.
These lies are significant, too. Part of Dr. Ford's story is that she's had life-long psychological problems because of Kavanaugh but the examples she gives are false. Does she even have any real lasting effects from the incident? If so then why did she feel the need to make some up? The obvious answer is that she wanted to make the incident more serious than it was. If she'd simply said that, while they were both teens and drunk, Kavanaugh had felt her up and put his hand over her mouth but it had no lasting effect on her then Kavanaugh would already be confirmed. So she embellished her story.
And that's where it really unravels. Once we establish that she embellished the facts we have to wonder how much of her testimony is true? Is she really convinced that it was Kavanaugh?
We also have to remember that this is a woman who twice traveled to DC to march in anti-Trump protests. So we have to wonder if she's really relating a traumatic experience from her teens or if she's using this as a chance to #resist?
The worst falsehood anyone has caught Kavanaugh in was that he was legally allowed to drink while in college. (Yes, some people have come forward and said that Kananaugh lied about his drinking but none of them have actually contradicted his sworn statements.) None of the various accusations about Kavanaugh have complimented each other. And Ford's is the most credible one.
So, measuring the statements that we can check by the two parties, I believe Kavanaugh is the one telling the truth.
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