As I warned in the earlier Headlines entry -- check your calendars. Today is October 2, less than five weeks before Election Day, and pretty much the point in the cycle where oppo research gets dumped in a rush to influence voters with salacious and scandalous stories ... whether true or not. 

Keep that in mind when considering this "exclusive" from the Daily Mail about Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris' husband and current Second Gentleman. Three witnesses have come forward to accuse Emhoff of assaulting his ex-girlfriend over twelve years ago while in France, although Emhoff's former lover has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation herself. And that seems like a particularly important point in an allegation such as this: 

The Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, 59, allegedly struck the woman in the face so hard she spun around, while waiting in a valet line late at night after a May 2012 Cannes Film Festival event in France.

One of her friends told DailyMail.com that the woman called him immediately after the incident, sobbing in her cab, and described the alleged assault.

A second friend said Jane, who had been dating Emhoff for three months, also told her about the alleged violence at the time.

A third friend told DailyMail.com that Jane first told her in 2014 that she had dated Emhoff, and recounted the full story of his alleged abuse in 2018, when then senator Harris was in the news after grilling Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a Senate hearing over sexual assault allegations.

We'll get back to the Kavanaugh standard, so to speak. For now, we have three witnesses and no actual complainant. How did the Daily Mail establish enough credibility without victim testimony to this alleged incident? Two of them claim that the victim -- "Jane" -- told them about it when it happened, and the third six years later. They also produced some documentation attesting to the relationship, but not the alleged assault:

The friends, who all asked not to be named for fear of retaliation by Emhoff, shared with DailyMail.com pictures of him and Jane together from 2012, and other documents and communications corroborating elements of the story. 

Jane declined to comment.

Hmmm.

At the time, Emhoff would have been single, so there's not much news to report about Emhoff dating. They also claim that the victim related the story of Emhoff impregnating the nanny to his children, a story that did come out a few weeks ago. But again, that only tends to corroborate that Emhoff and the victim had a relationship, not that he assaulted "Jane." None of them are witnesses in a courtroom sense either; they did not observe the assault, only allegedly hearing about it from a victim who won't comment either way on the allegation.

Needless to say, this doesn't exactly provide a damning conclusion at the moment. Nevertheless, Maureen Callahan demands answers from the Kamala Harris campaign, as well as from feminists that she accuses of being silent in the face of violence on women:

The bombshell allegation that Kamala Harris's husband once slapped a former girlfriend in the face so hard that she spun around — in public view outside an A-list gala in France — has been met with utter silence from the Harris campaign.

Why? How can the campaign of 'good character' and 'joy' — for a candidate who reminds us constantly that, as a prosecutor, she fiercely protected victims — retreat in the face of such a disgusting claim?

Perhaps they're hoping that if they ignore this their handmaidens in the national media will continue to follow suit.

Or perhaps they're just waiting to see who's behind the allegation. If it's Emhoff's ex-girlfriend, they will likely have to respond. But if this is coming out of left field without her cooperation, then they may be wise to sit tight and wait to see what develops first. This could well be a political dirty trick designed to draw the campaign into a denial that turns this into more of a story than it is now. 

The timing of this is certainly suspicious. Why would this only come up now when Harris has been VP for almost four years? True, she ended up on the top of the ticket in an unexpected fashion and that might affect the timing issue, but Harris has been the official nominee for two months now. Harris has been in the national political spotlight since winning the Senate seat in 2016, and as the main story notes, had a significant role in the attempted political lynching of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. That is what allegedly prompted the purported victim to reveal the episode to the third anonymous witness ... and yet it took six years more for any of the three to come forward, and still without the cooperation of the purported victim. Not to mention that even Emhoff's ex-wife has never alleged any kind of violence, and seems to be on relatively good terms with him to this day. That's not entirely dispositive, but it certainly cuts against the idea that Emhoff is some sort of domestic abuser. 

Color me very, very skeptical, at least as this stands at the moment. Even the Kavanaugh political lynching was predicated on a complaint by an alleged victim, not by hearsay testimony offered separately, although none of Christine Blasey Ford's claimed corroborating witnesses ever validated her claim. To Callahan's point, I doubt that would have made much difference to Democrats, and later claims they used did rely on second-hand complaints. But it is still a real difference right now, and will be unless Jane herself comes forward to make this allegation.

If she does and this is on the level, though, the media reaction to it will be very instructive -- at that point. Right now, the mainstream media has all sorts of good reasons to avoid amplifying this story, as does the Harris campaign and the International Association of Feminists.