Mitchell Memo: Evidence Does Not Support Ford’s Claims Against Kavanaugh

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Oct 1, 2018

In a Sunday memo sent to the 11 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, prosecutor Rachel Mitchell concluded that it would be unreasonable to move forward with a case against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove,” Mitchell said. “But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them.”

Mitchell continued to poke holes in Ford’s story, point by point, based on the responses Ford gave in her testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Prosecutors are trained to pay attention to details. So while many complained that it seemed Mitchell was not making headway, she obviously had a plan and executed it quite well. Mitchell is the deputy county attorney in charge of the Special Victims Division in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Here’s a sampling from the memo:

When speaking with her husband, Dr. Ford changed her description of the incident to become less specific.

Dr. Ford testified that she told her husband about a “sexual assault” before they were married.

But she told the Washington Post that she informed her husband that she was a victim of “physical abuse” at the beginning of their marriage.

She testified that, both times, she was referring to the same incident.

This is a small detail that went completely unnoticed to most of the nation as it watched Ford’s testimony. But those small details make a big difference to a prosecutor.

Mitchell also noted that Ford has not provided a consistent account of when the incident occurred, who was there, how she got to and from the event and that she has no memory of “key details” of the event.

Read the full memo here:

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