Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) followed-up on his request for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to provide the Committee with her therapist’s notes, polygraph records, and her correspondence with The Washington Post since she referred to them during her sworn testimony.
He called their refusal to provide that evidence outside of an FBI interview a non-sequitur since the Bureau would just hand that information over to the Committee anyway. Also, he pointed out, it is the Senate’s constitutional role to advise and consent so they would investigate and evaluate a nominee independent of anything the FBI does.
What struck me the most about his letter was the last paragraph:
I urge you once again, now for the third time in writing, to turn over the therapy notes, polygraph materials, and communications with The Washington Post that Dr. Ford has relied upon as evidence. In addition to the evidence I requested in my October 2 letter, in light of recently uncovered information, please turn over records and descriptions of direct or indirect communications between Dr. Ford or her representatives and any of the following: (1) U.S. Senators or their staffs, particularly the offices of Senators Feinstein and Hirono, other than your communications with me and my staff in preparation for the September 27 hearing; (2) the alleged witnesses identified by Dr. Ford (Leland Keyser, Mark Judge, and Patrick “P.J.” Smyth); and (3) Debbie Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, or their representatives. (emphasis mine)
What is this additional information? And what does he think the communications he is requesting will verify?
If this story from The Wall Street Journal has anything to do with it, this is incredibly bad.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Leland Keyser told FBI investigators that Monica McLean, a retired FBI agent who is friends with Ford, along with other mutual friends encouraged her to revisit her original statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Incidentally, an ex-boyfriend of Ford’s accused her of providing coaching to McLean for a polygraph test something she said she never did during her sworn testimony. McLean denied the allegation.
The Wall Street Journal also reports potential corroboration:
Ms. Keyser’s lawyer on Sept. 23 said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had no recollection of attending a party with Judge Kavanaugh, whom she said she didn’t know. That same day, however, she told the Washington Post that she believed Dr. Ford. On Sept. 29, two days after Dr. Ford and the judge testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Keyser’s attorney sent a letter to the panel saying his client wasn’t refuting Dr. Ford’s account and that she believed it but couldn’t corroborate it.
A person close to the former classmates said it was her understanding that mutual friends of Dr. Ford and Ms. Keyser, including Ms. McLean, had contacted Ms. Keyser after her initial statement to warn her that her statement was being used by Republicans to rebut the allegation against Judge Kavanaugh. The friends told Ms. Keyser that if she had intended to say she didn’t remember the party – not that it had never happened – that she should clarify her statement, the person said, adding that the friends
hand’t “pressured” Ms. Keyser.
David Laufman, McLean’s attorney, denied the allegations in a statement.
“Any notion or claim that Ms. McLean pressured Leland Keyser to alter Ms. Keyser’s account of what she recalled concerning the alleged incident between Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh is absolutely false,” he said.
I suspect this is at least part of what Grassley is looking into.
Here is the full text of the letter:
