‘I wish her no harm or humiliation, nor do I seek to denigrate her or diminish her voice. But I cannot agree with a description of events that I know is not true…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax found himself defiantly fighting for his political life this week and hinted at fellow Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam orchestrating a smear campaign against him, the woman at the center of a sexual-assault scandal went public with her story.
Vanessa Tyson, an associate professor of politics at California’s Scripps College, released a three-page statement through the law firm Katz, Marshall and Banks, relaying the lurid details of the 2004 assault where Fairfax allegedly forced her to perform oral sex in a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Statement of Dr. Vanessa Tyson, who has accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault in 2004:
“What began as consensual kissing quickly turned into a sexual assault.” pic.twitter.com/UI9Gz11DWj
— Sarah McCammon (@sarahmccammon) February 6, 2019
“After the assault, I suffered from both deep humiliation and shame,” Tyson said in the statement. “I did not speak about it for years, and I (like most survivors) suppressed those memories and emotions…”
They flooded back, however, when she saw an October 2017 article about Fairfax’s run for lieutenant governor.
“The image hit me like a ton of bricks,” she said, “triggering buried traumatic memories and the feelings of humiliation I’d felt so intensely…”
Tyson’s attorney, Debra Katz, became a household name last fall representing Christine Blasey Ford in her sexual assault accusations against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
As noted by Breitbart, many other parallels exist between the two cases, but their key difference—the fact that Fairfax is an African–American Democrat who last week seemed poised to ascend into the governor’s seat—also underscored the many egregious hypocrisies and double standards of the Left.
While The Washington Post was quick to jump on Blasey Ford’s account, despite a lack of corroboration, it spiked Tyson’s story when she first approached the Jeff Bezos-owned paper a year ago.
Tyson’s account also differs from Blasey Ford’s in the precision and level of detail, the fact that both acknowledge and remember the encounter, as well as the fact that both were fully mature adults—at the time graduate students—and that there is no apparent political motive, both being Democratic supporters.
The silence on the Fairfax allegations starkly demonstrates how, for many on the Left, the Blasey Ford allegations and even weaker charges against Kavanaugh were a just a handy partisan and ideological weapon https://t.co/AihtBjhYYj
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) February 5, 2019
Fairfax issued a rebuttal to Tyson’s statement in which he maintained that their encounter was “consensual.”
“I wish her no harm or humiliation, nor do I seek to denigrate her or diminish her voice. But I cannot agree with a description of events that I know is not true,” he said.
— Justin Fairfax (@LGJustinFairfax) February 6, 2019
Fairfax seemed the heir apparent to the gubernatorial seat last week after Northam admitted—before later recanting—that he had posed in a racist photograph featured on his 1984 medical school yearbook page.
Many prominent figures from both political parties called on him to resign, but he has thus far resisted.
It remains to be seen whether the weight of Fairfax’s scandal will cause some in the party to dial back their demands or suddenly fall silent.
Compounding the crisis, Attorney General Mark Herring, third in line for the governorship by Virginia law, said a photograph from the 1980s showed him, like Northam, wearing blackface.
While all three are Democrats, the fourth and final person in the succession order would be Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. But even as Cox called on Northam to resign, he said Monday that the state legislature would be unlikely to pursue impeachment charges.
“I think there’s a rightful hesitation about a removal from office,” Cox said. “Impeachment—that’s a very high standard.”