Christine Blasey Ford will (at last report) testify Thursday (27 September 2018) before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. She has adroitly orchestrated a delay in her testimony until that date. That leaves the Committee, and the Senate, barely enough time to vote. But we now have further evidence to discount her allegation completely. Christine Ford, with help, has cleaned up her history on the Internet. And she didn’t limit this cleanup to social networks only.

Christine Ford at first never mentioned Judge Kavanaugh

Recall the circumstances of her accusing Judge (actually Justice) Brett Kavanaugh of ungentlemanly conduct. Two different contributors to CNAV have already given that allegation the contempt it deserves. To their analysis your editor adds this:

First, remember that Christine Ford alleged in 2012 that an incident of that kind had occurred to her. No gentleman would behave toward a woman as this person did.¹ But she never named the perpetrator nor gave any indication that she had the slightest idea of his identity. In the meantime, Justice Kavanaugh was then serving on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Now she suddenly send a letter to her Representative in Congress. She then forwards it to Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Why wait so long? How did she recover her memory of the perpetrator? All this makes her position suspect. (And Senator Feinstein’s conduct in not challenging Justice Kavanaugh with the allegation in a one-on-one meeting makes her position suspect.)

We have investigated

Even laying that aside: we now have the benefit of an investigation. Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) reached out to Christine Ford several times. He did so directly after Ranking Member Feinstein refused to coöperate in the outreach. And Christine Ford refused repeatedly to testify, and the reasons she gave were patently specious. (Fear of flying? Really.) Now she has agreed to testify—on Thursday. Did Ranking Member Feinstein and/or one of her allies advise Prof. Ford to delay her testimony until then? And if so, why? Perhaps because they want to push a voter-ID challenge from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Judicial Circuit to the Supreme Court. If so, they do not—I repeat, they do not—want a Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh to hear it.² They want a tie that will let a ruling stand favorable to the Democratic Party.

Furthermore, several witnesses—whom Ford named—contradict her account, or else disclaim even their physical presence at the scene of the alleged crime.

And now, the history cleanup begins

And even laying that aside, we now can see directly how Christine Ford has cleaned up her history.

Prof. Ford drew a 2.4 rating at RateMyProfessors.com. Or she did until recently. Now her rating stands at 3.2. What happened? Someone scrubbed three of the eight ratings for her. Two were Awful, one Poor. Here is her original rating, courtesy of the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20180916225841/https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1352705

See how that differs from her current rating:

Christine Ford at California State University Fullerton – RateMyProfessors.com

Details of her ratings

So what do we learn from the Wayback Machine? That she had a dark personality and a temper while she taught social work at CSUF.See the snapshots in this Gallery.

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Said the student who rated her Poor:

Take her class and you will take antidepressant, start smoking or drinking again and gain 20lbs at your risk.

Said one who rated her Awful:

Prof. Ford is unprofessional, lacks appropriate filters, and I am honestly scared of her. She’s made comments both in class and in e-mails, if you cross her, you will be on her bad side. I fear to think of the poor clients that had to deal with her while she got her MSW and her LCSW. Absolutely the worst teacher I ever had

And this from a student who got an A in her class! Said another:

Christine ford is the worst educator I have ever experienced. Avoid taking her class and avoid any interaction with this person. I feel like she has something wrong with her and I am surprised no one has caught this. Also avoid fullerton’s MSW program as long as she is there.

What could be wrong?

Another Awful rater left this clue:

Do not take her class. [S]he is unclear with directions. Hard grader and talks for 2hr 45min without giving a break. she is exact opposite of what she teaches. empowering??? not at all[.]

Two hours and forty-five minutes without a break? This takes your editor back to medical school, but that looks symptomatic of bipolar affective disorder. To be specific: she must have been in a manic episode to talk so long without pause.

Sour grapes? Not from the A student, surely. Besides, most of the students who rated her Average or even Awesome, attested to her “dark personality.” One Awesome rater called her personality polarizing; another called her “a tough cookie.”

More tellingly than any of this: several other RateMyProfessors account holders had rated the reviews themselves. Without exception, clear majorities found the Awful and Poor ratings useful and the Average and Awesome ratings less than useful.

The cover-up

That might not have been relevant, except for the history cleanup. In fact, that’s how the Watergate conspirators fell down. The burglary itself would have mattered little, had they not tried to cover it up.

And how do we know this? Because in the present version of the page, only one Awful rating remains. Nor did whoever removed those other ratings, wait very long: they acted the very next day.

<https://web.archive.org/web/20180918043014/http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1352705>

Three days later the page stood thus:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20180920105117/http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1352705>

Oddly, the Awful rating still in place cites her talking for 2 hours and 45 minutes without pause. But the useful/useless ratings of the reviews still skew toward the Awful, even after many other students have weighed in.

As further evidence of sanitization of the historical record, someone scrubbed her high school yearbook from the Internet. The scrubbed data point to a promiscuous lifestyle and even—though this latter might be less relevant—racism on her part.

To say nothing of her having erased her entire Internet social-network presence before she “came forward.” No one does that successfully without advice. And she would be able to get that advice. Her associations gave her access to specific technical advice on how to erase one’s social-networking presence.

A plan for a two-year vacancy

And the association likely extends into the Senate itself. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) gave the game away a week ago. The Senate Democratic Caucus would like to hold the Supreme Court seat vacant for two years. They still think they can run a Presidential candidate to beat Donald Trump.

On that basis, we must consider the Christine Ford account unreliable. A principle of law, which the law borrows from Aesop’s fable of the Boy who Cried Wolf, says that when a witness, or a litigant, misrepresents a material point, everything that person says is suspect and legally unreliable. And so it now is with Professor Christine Ford.³

Update

Certain correspondents on other social forums have pleaded mistaken identity on behalf of Christine Ford. They allege that the Christine Ford at California State University Fullerton is not the same woman who teaches at Palo Alto University and sometimes at Stanford University. Well, if these are not the same identity, then one must ask another salient question. The records for Christine Ford at Palo Alto and Stanford have no reviews showing at present. A search on “Christine Ford” or even “Christine Blasey Ford” at Stanford or Palo Alto leads to the page for submitting a new rating.

CNAV concedes a bare possibility that the CSUF Christine Ford is not the one in the news. But now this professor must explain why no student has rated her yet. Or did she scrub all her ratings at Palo Alto and Stanford?

Endnotes