It could have happened this way—a Heisenberg: the GOP's attempts to inoculate Kavanaugh against an accusation that Christine Blasey Ford had decided not to make pubic lead them to leak enough to reporters to convince CBF to come forward: Nicole Belle: Don't Kid Yourself. The GOP KNOWS Kavanaugh Tried To Rape Someone: "Blasey Ford... sends a letter to her representative... Anna Eshoo.... Eshoo passes Blasey Ford's letter on to Dianne Feinstein.... After several back-and-forths, Blasey Ford tells Feinstein's office she does not want to be put through testifying publicly...
...Feinstein respects that choice and tells colleagues that the matter has been handled. Feinstein also forwards the letter to the FBI for investigation (to be clear, this means the vetting investigation, not a criminal investigation). Per Feinstein, this happens sometime in early August—before the hearing begins. The FBI notifies the White House of the letter to see if they want follow-up. The White House declines further investigation. But now they know. And now they pass it on to GOP operatives. Early August.... So now the PR campaign goes into overdrive... glossy television ads of white women saying what a great guy he is... papers and online publications. Tiger Mom Amy Chua... offers an op-ed about how grateful she is that Kavanaugh selected her daughter as a clerk... the infamous letter of 65 women who Kavanaugh didn't try to rape... soccer team girls... carpooling... 5K races... all peremptory defense against a charge not yet out in the public. They knew it was coming.
They start leaking it to reporters who start sniffing around Blasey Ford at home and work, knowing that's going to intimidate her more. By last week, Blasey Ford realizes that the story is out and she can either tell her story herself or have the Republicans tell it for her. So she identifies herself. And almost immediately, the threats begin. She and her family must leave their home and work and get security. She gets an alert that BEFORE her name is known, Ed Whelan is poking around her LinkedIn profile. How would they know to do that if they didn't know about these charges, despite Kavanaugh's claim that he didn't know who made these charges until her name was outed?...
The first response from Kavanaugh and GOP operatives is to deny, deny, deny.... The stories start to change and morph and the GOP tries to find a message that works.... So the first defense was the "recovered memories are faulty". They sent Linda Chavez out to All In with Chris Hayes to float it. Republican operative Ed Whelan tweeted it (now deleted). But that didn't work.... So they went with the "doppelganger" theory. Sure, she may have been attacked, but she got confused about the identity of the attacker. First, they sent out Kathleen Parker to float it without specifics of the designated doppelganger, Chris Garrett. Seemed to work as a plausible deniability tactic, or at least, wasn't as openly mocked as the recovered memory one. Orrin Hatch's staffers are involved at this point because his Deputy Chief of Staff previews the coming tweet storm by Whelan. And then Whelan puts the meat on the bone.... The fact that Chris Garrett is still silent suggests to me that he volunteered to fall on the sword for his buddy Brett, because Whelan has been a political operative for a long time and knows a defamation suit by an innocent man unfairly accused would destroy all credibility of this defense. Let that irony steep for a bit. Because if Garrett didn't know, they just did to him what they're accusing Dr. Blasey Ford of doing to the undeserving Brett Kavanaugh....
Whelan... has a lot of very specific information that isn't in the public sphere and could only be provided by someone familiar with the actual event: Blasey Ford's friend, who attended the party as well. He also knew the layout of Garrett's childhood home and the similarity to Blasey Ford's description (apparently the staircase upstairs to the second floor had a landing in the middle). All that information he pushes into this tweetstorm to suggest that maybe this singularly traumatic event that has deeply affected Blasey Ford for decades could simply be... her confusing one white guy with brown hair for another.... Whelan names Garrett as a possible actual attempted rapist and then walks it back, claiming he didn't imply guilt, ultimately deleting the entire tweetstorm. But that's exactly what he did. It's a GOP ploy as old as time: Poison the well. You call attention to the poison. People lose their mind over the poisoned well and then you walk it back BEFORE people stop and say, "Wait. How did you know it was poisoned?"
Because the answer to this is, BRETT KAVANAUGH gave Whelan the poison. No one else could have provided all of this info. And it implicitly ADMITS that the attack happened. And what that means is that Kavanaugh knows exactly what Ford said did happen, it did happen, and he just wanted to throw out enough stuff for plausible deniability. So the GOP threw up woman after woman after woman as human shields against an attempted rapist. Because women are only tools to them...
#shouldread
