What was the role of Monica McLean?
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”]
Quite a few commenters have referenced stories circulating about the role of Christine Blasey Ford’s lifelong chum Monica McLean in this entire mess. McLean is a lawyer who spent a great deal of her working life with the FBI, and the person named by Ford’s ex-boyfriend as the friend Ford helped take a polygraph long ago (something McLean has denied).
I have no idea what the extent of McLean’s role in the anti-Kavanaugh campaign has been, but here’s an article summarizing the speculations and allegations.
In addition, I read this today about the testimony of Leland Keyser, another high school friend of Ford’s, during the latest FBI investigation of Kavanaugh [emphasis mine]:
Ford identified Leland Ingham Keyser, a former classmate, as having attended a house party Maryland in the early 1980s, in which she accused Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed, attempting to remove her clothes and putting his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream.
Keyser originally said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 23 she “does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present.” After Kavanaugh and Ford testified in front of the committee last week, Keyser wrote a letter to the committee dated Sept. 29 that said she did not refute Ford’s claims, but “is unable to corroborate it because she has no recollection of the incident in question,” according to CNN.
Keyser told the investigators that she was — as the Journal notes — urged to clarify her statement by Monica McLean, a former FBI agent and friend of Ford’s, the paper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
McLean’s lawyer denied his client tried to influence Keyser to change her account, calling it “absolutely false.”…
A person close to the former classmates told the Journal she believed mutual friends of both Ford and Keyser – including McLean – simply reached out to Keyser to warn her that her statement was being used by Republicans as vindication for Kavanagh and if she felt she needed to clarify what she meant, she should. The person said the mutual friends did not “pressure” Keyser.
Well, at least not pressure-pressure.
Keyser may turn out to be the unsung heroine here. Even if these “mutual friends” were indeed just “reaching out” to Keyser to helpfully point out what she couldn’t possibly have known—and what should be irrelevant anyway—which is that her statements helped the Republican cause. Well, d—uh.
[NOTE: And then there’s this article which, if true, indicates that Christine Ford blindsided her BFF Leland Keyser and never warned her in advance that she would be naming her as witness. What’s more, they haven’t been good friends for years. Again, I’m not sure this is true, but if so, it certainly explains Ford’s viperish demeanor when questioned about Keyser, the affect I highlighted in this previous post, with video. I will add that I really don’t know how anyone could watch that segment and still be utterly convinced of Ford’s sincerity and truthfulness. To me, it was a big red flag about both.]
Do you know who “Maclean’s lawyer” is?
David Laufman, former head of DOJ National Security Division.
David Laufman was the Department of Justice, National Security Division, Deputy Asst. Attorney General in charge of counterintelligence, cyber security, counterespionage and export controls.
As most people are now aware the epicenter of the DOJ/FBI Clinton-Steele operation against candidate Trump stemmed from a collaborate “small group” effort of Main Justice officials within the National Security Division (John P Carlin – head), and officials within the FBI centered around the Counterintelligence Division (Bill Priestap – head).
This is getting deeper and deeper.
There is now speculation at Althouse among some of us commenters about how this went down. For example:
buwaya said…
” I am not sure how they roped Ford into it. Money? Mentally unbalanced? Blackmail?”
CIA asset, and membership in the caste is my guess. Plus a guarantee of compensation, through one channel or another.”
In America, always follow the money. What’s in it for her? Let’s see, so far she has one million in a gofundme account. She gets her fifteen minutes of fame which comes with speaking fees and a possible book deal. Anita Hill managed rather well after her character assassination attempt against Judge Thomas.
I have heard a bit about a CIA connection through her father. Of course, Strzok also had a father CIA connection.
Isn’t that interesting ?
I remember the time a white woman accused Emmett Till and democrats believed her
http://www.floppingaces.net/2018/10/04/i-remember-the-time-a-white-woman-accused-emmett-till-and-democrats-believed-her/
they havent even learned from their own mistakes…
This woman has said her ex-fiance hit her, causing a black eye and other injuries. But now his attorney says this home surveillance video tells a different story
without the home video watching her scream and beat herself in the face, who today wold believe women do that…
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1047863988120440832
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the whole point of having other girlfriends know what you said, but testify you said it, even though they werent there, is that this is part of the hearsay statutes that turn hearsay into evidence.
yes. if you tell your girlfriend, hearsay is evidentiary
ergo all this odd stuff…
they are trying toput the points in to turn nothing into evidence
putting the i on the dragon
FWIW, I dropped some more breadcrumbs along the trail at the Carlson-Dershowitz post, but Neo is (as usual) well up to date on the Conspiracy.
(I have bookmarks for Russia/Trump and Moore/Kavanaugh, but now I’ve added DeepStateConnections because they seem to be all cut from the same cloth.)
I have moved from thinking this was a recovered memory of something that happened, but not with Kavanaugh, to thinking this was a total setup. Despicable.
You know Kate…in the last 24 hours I’ve changed my mind too. I appreciate you opening that side of things.
I’ve always thought she was straight up lying, but I thought it was to cover her tracks on some infidelity against her own marriage…”I’m sorry I cheated darling but it was that Kavanaugh kid that messed me up!”
But now…total set up. She was cultivated from the inside & “handled” like a spy or mole would be. The intersecting lawyers & friends with Deep State links are the “tell.” The cascade of lies & inconsistencies simply indicate that the Left was counting on the “believe the woman & rage” narrative to make Kavanaugh or enough Rs fold to win this one. They underestimated the Judge, his wife & the rest of the country, and the investigation poked holes in all their balloons.
I really hope someone loses their bar license or goes to jail on this one. Anita Hill was bad enough. This is so far beyond the pale that I’m not convinced tar & feathers would fix it.
I have heard a bit about a CIA connection through her father. Of course, Strzok also had a father CIA connection.
I think those are red herrings courtesy ZeroHedge. Her father was a civil trial lawyer. Her paternal-side relations have lived around DC at least since the 1890s. Her mother’s family is by some accounts from Ohio but decamped to Maryland after her gf got out of the military in 1946. At least in his younger years, her maternal-side gf was a wage-earner with no special skill set.
“I have moved from thinking this was a recovered memory of something that happened, but not with Kavanaugh, to thinking this was a total setup.”
Yes.
It was the internal inconsistencies in the descriptive terms used (visual when auditory should have been used; relative maturity inconsistency, etc.) that was the final piece for me. Am not really up to speed on the whole deep-state stuff (but not surprised).
The political games disgust me, but, as a survivor and relative of several other survivors, plus a male relative falsely accused and convicted, am deeply angry at Ford. She has set back true justice for survivors (of both kinds).
Art Deco, you made be right but I keep hearing it and do tale zero hedge with a few grains of salt.
No question about Strzok.
Blasey Ford’s letter of July 30th was written in Rehoboth, Delaware, as mentioned during her testimony. That’s where McLean lives. By the way, how did she get there? Did she fly?
There is a blog called Conservative Treehouse that goes into more detail. The post was published on October 3rd.
Looks like we can begin discussing Supreme Court justice Kavanaugh. Collins and Manchin are voting yes.
As my Brit pals might put it, I’d take ZeroHedge with a shedload of salt.
Can anyone tell me more about Manchin? Is he an ethical and principled man or just a cunning democrat trying to win an election in a red state?
Iran’s supreme leader says the West has a #MeToo problem because women don’t wear the hijab
Off thread, but interesting. Sarah Palin is threatening to primary Murkowski. The barracuda in the senate would be fun to observe.
It’s very clear that the Left feels morally entitled to a veto on Supreme Court appointments, regardless of whether they have the votes under the rules to do so.
I think that’s why they never worried about breaking the filibuster. There’s the rules on paper, and then the real rules. The real rules are that if you have the ability to make someone toxic enough you have your veto.
I think the establishment GOP realized, with Kavanaugh, that the establishment Left was done with all the gentlemen’s agreements and the norms, that if they would do it to Kavanaugh none of them were safe. Moore was an outsider, and so was Franken really. They never felt threatened by what happened to them. Kavanaugh grew up in the establishment, even his Yale classmates showed they cared more about the politics than about his humanity.
This was orchestrated from the get go. Ford will make millions from this charade and will never face prosecution for perjury.
Why would anyone think making a few millions more in this temporary mortal life is worth spending eternity in H**l suffering infinite type of tortures for?
The stench from this despicable affair just gets worse and worse.
Sarah Palin is threatening to primary Murkowski.
That would be interesting. Maybe that’s why she sold her Phoenix house. I was hoping she would be a possible replacement for McCain.
even his Yale classmates showed they cared more about the politics than about his humanity.
Two of them, one of whom he was on bad terms with at the time. About half of what Roche had to say has been discredited (and seemed out of place even absent new information about period slang in DC). What’s interesting about Roche is that since 1984, he’s changed careers once, he’s lived in at least three different cities, he’s worked for four companies to which he admits (there are 13 years missing from his LinkedIn profile), and yet he goes out of his way to grass up a man with whom he had some petty disputes 34 years ago. What sort of a person holds grudges that long?
John Guilfoyle on October 5, 2018 at 3:30 pm at 3:30 pm said:
You know Kate…in the last 24 hours I’ve changed my mind too. I appreciate you opening that side of things.
I’ve always thought she was straight up lying, but I thought it was to cover her tracks on some infidelity against her own marriage…”I’m sorry I cheated darling but it was that Kavanaugh kid that messed me up!”
But now…total set up. She was cultivated from the inside & “handled” like a spy or mole would be. The intersecting lawyers & friends with Deep State links are the “tell.” The cascade of lies & inconsistencies simply indicate that the Left was counting on the “believe the woman & rage” narrative to make Kavanaugh or enough Rs fold to win this one. They underestimated the Judge, his wife & the rest of the country, and the investigation poked holes in all their balloons.
I really hope someone loses their bar license or goes to jail on this one. Anita Hill was bad enough. This is so far beyond the pale that I’m not convinced tar & feathers would fix it.
* * *
And we didn’t even get the tar and feathers with Hill.
(I would not wish that hellish torture on anyone however, so — metaphor only.)
Besides underestimating Judge (Justice!) Kavanaugh, they (and we) also underestimated Grassley, Graham, and possibly Collins (you go, girl !!), but I think if Kavanaugh or Trump had backed off even a little bit, the GOP would have folded (we need more such intemperate judges, in my opinion, when the intemperance is in pursuit of justice — or even of mercy).
The other thing they did wrong was assume that Ford’s “witnesses” would either waffle or pile on, most likely the former, under the belief that all of them had some “defect” that the lawyers / handlers could exploit.
As many people supporting Kavanaugh have suggested, Judge was the first “witness” solely because of his book: it was a not-unreasonable speculation that he would hem and haw and admit that he was so soused most of the time that he just didn’t remember. BUT that speculation depended on their conviction that Kavanaugh was, in fact, very often a roving-hand play-boy drunkard, so that Judge would just guess that even if he personally didn’t remember that one time Ford alleged, well, good ol’ Bart O’K might have done it anyway. Any such hedging would be all the “corroboration” the target Senators & the public needed (the mob clearly doesn’t’ care).
But because Kavanaugh wasn’t a RHPBD at all, there was no “pool” of incidents which Judge might assume held this one particular fish. Hence the unequivocal NO.
Not sewing up Keyser’s testimony from the beginning was also a mistake. She could easily, it seems to me, have been cajoled into “remembering” the event that Ford alleged, but they forgot to bring her in at the beginning (an oversight that Ramirez tried, and failed, to avoid). Apparently she is a woman of very strong moral fiber, unwilling to swear to something that she has no memory or knowledge of, whether true or false, or else (like Judge) simply doesn’t believe Brett K was made in the same mold as the “attackers” that Ford described.
PJ Smyth is kind of an anomaly: why include him at all? I don’t really remember all the specualtions about him. Ford, deprived of his corroboration, dismissed him (and Keyser) as simply “not being aware” of the awful ordeal she had endured. But why was he expected to support her in the first place?
However, she also didn’t get him signed on before dragging him in, so see the argument for Mark Judge again.
Did something really happen to Ford that she tried to fasten on Kavanaugh?
Short of a real recovered memory or a confession, I doubt we will ever know.
There are reams written about “why” people make false accusations, and some broad categories, but everyone puts their own unique spin on the origin of their stories.
In the fictionalized thriller that I intend to write, thinly disguising all the names (or, alternatively, writing a factual expose and making up the conversations, as that seems to be the mode du jour), the scenario would include the fact that her parents and siblings did not sign onto the letter of support from her in-laws (if that changed, I haven’t seen anything), and thus know something about her history and character that no one else has revealed.
Or she’s just lying, start to finish.
And I would be supremely disappointed if there are not some expulsions from the associated attorney’s bar associations over this.
MikeK on October 5, 2018 at 8:44 pm at 8:44 pm said:
Sarah Palin is threatening to primary Murkowski.
That would be interesting. Maybe that’s why she sold her Phoenix house. I was hoping she would be a possible replacement for McCain.
* * *
I would support her in either state.
Would vote for her if I could.
It seems to me that Judge Kavanaugh gave the rest of the republicans backbone transplants. He would not back down. He showed what courage and character looks like in Washington, D.C.
The democrats may rue this day. The mask fell off. All who looked saw into their black evil hearts.
Would *love* to see Sarah P. in the Senate. Not only for herself which would already be great but it would drive the Dems stark raving mad. OK, madder.
This travesty made Anita hill seemed like child play. I guess this time democrats didn’t feel the need to hold punches since Kavanuagh is white. This time around there is no need to worry about bad optics among their base, since when it comes to getting even with the evil white men the liberals base allows democrats to go as low as necessary.
I couldn’t get past the comment by Ford that “PJ and Leland don’t remember because nothing remarkable happened to them that night .”
Whaaaaat? Did anybody else notice how crazy that was?
I once climbed out a bathroom window and walked home to get away from a very ‘persistent’ guy. The friend I left behind (who was very happily occupied with a friend of Mr. Persistent), most definitely considered my disappearance a ‘remarkable’ happening. Such that it was the main subject of discussion between us for days.
I simply can’t believe Leland would not remember her friend disappearing like that. Not when they were the only girls at the party. And ‘Besties’. Not possible. Obviously, it never happened.
And anyway, what kind of person would leave a friend in a house with her attacker?
That statement was just too screwy and contrived for words.
Still believe Trump should have picked someone who was younger, when you want your side to hold the seat as long as possible you should choose someone who is really young, preferably someone in their early 40s like Thomas was.
I’ve worked with survivors and have a lot of compassion for them and until reading this thread my view has been – at least the Democrats didn’t make this all up like the Russian collusion hoax. My take has been that Kavanaugh was a GOPe pick with a exceptional judicial record and was picked to reward Mitch McConnell (if not actually picked by him) in reward for what he has done to get conservative judges appointed. A safe ‘unimpeachable’ pick until Ford sent her letter to Feinstein. I would still see it as a gift from the political gods even if Ford felt Feinstein out through a lawyer. But the deep state connection certainly looks different after what we have seen from the DOJ, FBI etc.. It is no longer a bridge too far to think it. At the same time what I took away from Ford’s testimony was that ‘something’ happened to her – and probably a lot more than the alleged incident. I felt something close to Kavanaugh’s daughter who was moved to pray for her also knowing that it might be one of those completely credible performances people sometimes put on. I’ve know my share of psychopath’s too. I also know that given what is at stake and the amount of money and passion motivating the left at this point it is very hard to even start to judge Ford’s testimony accurately without knowing to what extent her testimony is the result of all the money and legal skill behind her. For example, was her inability to supply a place, a date, or how she got home the result of her layers wanting to make it harder to disprove her story or genuine testimony? I’m not a lawyer, but saying that she is 100% sure it was Kavanaugh is the silver bullet – the rest is optional – particularly if giving the particulars might just derail the main charge. Like if the person she might have testified brought her home didn’t drive or was provably elsewhere. But I can do the same thing with Kavanaugh and wonder if he repressed the memory or was drunk enough not to remember. Pfui. The one thing I will add is that the three witnesses against him reminds me of the infamous three layered mortgage backed securities of the property bubble. The top layer is plausible (ie Ford) the middle layer is no good and the bottom layer is total nonsense. What I see mostly is a desperate MSM/Democrat establishment throwing mud and hoping something will stick, not the well orchestrated hoax of the Russia collusion which would have become part of reality if Trump had lost.