An attorney for Christine Blasey Ford, who claims she was sexually assaulted in the 1980s by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, released a polygraph test administered to the alleged victim on Aug. 7.
Polygraph tests are generally bunk anyway. But this test especially tells us absolutely nothing about whether there’s any truth to Ford’s claim that Kavanaugh forcefully “tried to disrobe” her in a “highly inebriated state” when they were both in high school.
In fact, like the four witnesses to the party named by Ford who have denied any recollection of what she describes, this test and its accompanying documentation work against her allegation.
First, the records released Wednesday show Ford was asked only two questions during her test. The first one is: “Is any part of your statement false?” She answered, “No.” The second question is: “Did you make up any part of your statement?” She again answered, “No.”
Polygraphs are already notoriously unreliable — so unreliable, in fact, that they’re inadmissible in court — but this Aug. 7 test goes well beyond merely unreliable. She was asked no details about her story. Kavanaugh’s name wasn’t even mentioned.
Second, there’s the written statement that went along with the test. It has multiple edits and contradictions, and it conflicts directly with the information she provided in the letter delivered on July 30 to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
In the polygraph statement, Ford wrote that there were four “people” at the party where she says Kavanaugh attacked her. She then crossed out “people” and replaced it with “boys.” She added there were also a “couple of girls.” There are additional little things, like writing “two boys were in the room” and replacing what appears to be the beginning of the word “yell” with the word “scream.”
These seem like little things, but it’s difficult reconciling this Aug. 7 polygraph statement in which Ford identified four boys and a “couple of girls” with her July 30 letter to Feinstein in which she alleged the assault took place at a “gathering that included me and 4 others.”
Honestly, this polygraph test does more harm to her story than good. It makes the whole story murkier.
One of Popehat.com’s libertarian attorneys put it best Wednesday afternoon in a tweet that read, “The questions consisted of: Is any part of your written statement false? No. Did you make any of it up? No. Even for an inadmissible quack witch doctor snake oil unscientific polygraph report, this is bad.”
So this is where we are — still without any contemporaneous or corroborating evidence or testimony to any of the misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh. And corroboration is the difference between those allegations that people actually believe (such as those against Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby) and allegations that people don’t believe.
