Well, Ed Whelan has rolled out his case for Brett Kavanaugh’s innocence by…insinuating Christine Blasey Ford mistook him for another guy. This is definitely newsworthy but it’s also completely unproven and, so far as I can tell, based on a not much more than a series of guesses. If this is all Whelan has it’s really not very remarkable. Before we even get to that, let’s start with the statement Whelan posted near the end of his thread:
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042899805507342337
We’ll get to Garrett in a moment but first, Whelan’s theory is that based on the description given by Ford, the house where this happened could have been this one:
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042895886110609408
He then goes through the floorplan of the house and points out ways in which it seems to match Ford’s description:
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042896652623900673
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042897171962634240
Could this be the house? Yes. But there are probably several hundred other houses in the same neighborhood which might also match Ford’s description. Builders often do a batch of homes in a given area, some of which have similar or even identical floorplans. There could literally be 20 other houses that look exactly like this within a few blocks. Just to emphasize the point, I live in a large tract in Southern California that was originally built in the 1960s. There are probably 150 houses but all of them are based on just four floor plans.
Of course, I don’t know if that’s the case in this neighborhood in Maryland, but that’s the point. We’d need a whole lot more information to determine if the layout of this home is at all special in order to say it must deserve our attention more than others.
So why is Whelan focused on this house in particular? Because the guy who lived there went to school with Mike Judge and Brett Kavanaugh and even looks a bit like Brett Kavanaugh:
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042898084072763393
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042898896484290561
Do they look alike? Yeah, they do. If you had told me the guy in the red shirt was Kavanaugh I’m not sure I’d have doubted it. But we’re still way out on a limb here. Has anyone spoken to Garrett? Has anyone else at the alleged party claimed the party was at his house? Who are the folks who claimed they looked alike in school? Again, this is supposition upon supposition at this point.
Whelan does say one thing that makes a lot of sense. If Ford is telling the truth, then the party must have been held at the home of one of the people at the party. If that wasn’t Ford or Kavanaugh or Judge or “PJ” Smyth then there aren’t many options left at a party with only 6 people.
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1042899156837322752
Finding the owner of the home would be a real breakthrough, I’m just not convinced Whelan has done it. In fact, Whelan has just done to Garrett what Ford did to Kavanaugh, i.e. make a potentially life-changing sexual assault allegation without much in the way of hard facts. Literally, he looks like another guy and his house is one of an unknown number that could fit the description given by Ford is not much to go on. If vague accusations aren’t enough to bork Kavanaugh then they shouldn’t be enough to finger anyone else either.
As far as the politics go, all Ford has to do is deny Garrett was the guy or deny that was the house and the whole theory goes poof! In the process, Ford gains some additional sympathy for having survived a vicious right-wing attack (you know that’s what someone will label it). It’s not going to help Kavanaugh unless Whelan has more in the way of proof. If he does, he should stop playing footsy and put it all out there. If there’s any upside to this, it’s that some members of the media are suddenly alert to the dangers of spreading unsubstantiated allegations:
Random question I have: Why are journalists retweeting unverified allegations?
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) September 20, 2018
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