Mary Margaret Olohan at The Daily Caller posted new video today of the lawyer for Christine Blasey Ford saying that putting “an asterisk next to” Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s name before “he takes a scalpel” to Roe v. Wade was “part of what motivated” Ford to speak out and accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, was speaking at the University of Baltimore’s 11th Feminist Legal Theory Conference, “Applied Feminism and #MeToo” in April. It was first reported in a new book by Ryan Lovelace titled Search and Destroy: Inside the Campaign Against Brett Kavanaugh.
DEBRA KATZ: In the aftermath of these hearings, I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court. We're gonna have a conservative. Elections have consequences.
But he will always have an asterisk next to his name, When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine.
After the hearings failed to ruin the Kavanaugh nomination, the liberal media perpetuated the myth that this wasn't a feminist conspiracy. In a gushy Time cover story, Haley Sweetland Edwards claimed "even if Kavanaugh joins the bench, Ford has cemented herself as a historic figure. In her courage, many Americans saw the opposite of everything they think is wrong with Washington. Politicians spin, fudge the truth, grasp at power. Ford appeared guileless."
Edwards lectured "Critics have smeared her as a two-bit political operative," when she only testified "out of what she saw a civic duty."
And then? Time gushed over her again with a tribute to her "civic duty" penned by....Senator Kamala Harris.
Ford's politics were almost completely ignored by the networks during the hearings, according to Rich Noyes:
On September 17, National Public Radio — hardly a right-wing outlet — passed along how Ford’s lawyer, Lisa Banks, said the accuser “was not motivated by politics,” but NPR added crucial context to that statement: “Ford is a registered Democrat who has made small political contributions to Democratic organizations. In April 2017, she attended a March For Science in San Francisco, which was held to protest Trump administration cuts to research, and she signed a letter in June 2018 condemning the Trump administration’s policy, since abandoned, of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border.”
None of these facts made it onto the broadcast networks. Only NBC bothered to mention this topic, when on September 17 Today co-host Savannah Guthrie invited Ford’s attorney, Debra Katz, to knock down the idea that partisanship was a factor: “According to the Washington Post, she’s a Democrat. A lot of people look at this and say here’s somebody who has a political motive to tell this story. What would you say to that?”
THIS is what Katz said THEN: “I would say no one in their right mind, regardless of their motive, would want to inject themselves into this process and face the kind of annihilation that she will be subjected to by those who want this nominee to go through. This is not a politically motivated action.”
Guthrie's 12-second question was still better than ABC and CBS, which never spent a second telling viewers about Ford’s liberal activism.
