The prosecutor who questioned Christine Blasey Ford in Senate hearing says her case against Kavanaugh is weak
- The prosecutor who questioned professor Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over sexual assault allegations wrote in a memo that Ford's case against Kavanaugh was weak.
- In the five-page memo obtained by The Washington Post, Mitchell detailed several inconsistencies from Ford's testimony, in which she claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s.
- Based on these inconsistencies, Mitchell wrote, she would not bring criminal charges against Kavanaugh.
The prosecutor who questioned professor Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over sexual assault allegations wrote in a memo that Ford's case against Kavanaugh is weak.
The Washington Post obtained the five-page memo prosecutor Rachel Mitchell sent to Senate Republicans Sunday night that said key inconsistencies in Ford's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee rendered the case too weak to pursue.
"A 'he said, she said' case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that," Mitchell wrote. "Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them."
Mitchell pointed out in the memo that Ford wasn't able to recall the date and never identified Kavanaugh by name in the evidence provided to the committee, which included notes from a 2012 therapy session.
In her testimony, Ford said she was "100%" certain that Kavanaugh was the person who committed the early 1980s assault when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh emphatically denied these claims following Ford's testimony.
"For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the [Senate Judiciary] Committee," Mitchell wrote. "Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard."
The memo comes just two days into a developing FBI investigation into sexual misconduct allegations by three women against Kavanaugh.