‘I would expect that he would remember that this happened…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After nine hours of compelling testimony and high drama at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, there were bound to be a few overlooked moments.
But as years of left-wing hardball have taught conservatives, the devil often is in the details—quite possibly coming down to the nuanced double-meaning of a single word or in something left unsaid that should have been.
One largely overlooked line of questioning could be a game-changer: Who was the mystery guest at the party, and what might his story reveal should he choose to go public?
The total count of the people at the ‘gathering’ has fluctuated as Ford’s story has evolved, but the agreed upon number present at the time of Ford’s alleged assault seems to be four boys and two girls. The boys were: Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, Patrick “PJ” Smyth and one whose name Ford could not remember. The girls were Ford and her friend, Leland Keyser (née Ingram).
All four of the named guests, besides Ford, have issued sworn statements disputing any recollection of such an event… but something’s missing.
Somewhere out there is another person whose testimony might further help to exonerate Kavanaugh–but it is also possible that Ford and her lawyers (including the Katz firm referred by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office) have a fourth man waiting in the wings who would negate the other party-goers’ denials and possibly lay the stage for perjury accusations.
Might Ford have been laying cover for her friends when she said, “I don’t expect that PJ and Leland would remember this evening. It was a very unremarkable party—it was not one of their more notorious parties… Mr. Judge is a different story. I would expect that he would remember that this happened.”
As to the mystery man, it isn’t Chris “Squio” Garrett, the classmate and teammate of the boys’ with whom Ford testified she “went out.” After Ed Whelan named Garrett as a possible doppelganger of Kavanaugh’s who could have committed the alleged assault, Ford immediately dismissed it, saying there was “zero chance” she would have confused them. She actively resisted speaking of Garrett during the hearing, even declining to name him.
However, as GOP interrogator Rachel Mitchell’s ‘cross-examination’ of Kavanaugh noted, there is a plausible answer in Kavanaugh’s calendar entries on Thursday, July 1, 1982, when all of the key players were said to have gathered at the home of Tim Gaudette.
Liberal Washington Post columnist Philip Bump snarkily crowed over the fact that Mitchell’s line of questioning about the entry seemed to harm Kavanaugh (which perhaps also may help explain why the GOP senators subsequently benched her), but there may have been method in her madness trying to prophylactically (no pun intended) establish the identity of the potential revelers before another dramatic reveal by the Ford-Feinstein-Katz camp.
Already, Gaudette released a statement concerning the Georgetown Prep yearbook investigation by The New York Times. His unveiling as the fourth boy—and saying he did or did not witness something in his own home—could turn the tide of the story.
Might he have been one of the two men who came forward prior to the Judiciary Committee hearing saying he committed the assault? Or could he resolutely say that he had never in his life met Ford or Leyland Keyser and provide a more thorough account of the evening?
Both seem highly unlikely. Gaudette is the former chair of Denver’s Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and previously donated money to the leftist ActBlue PAC. (NOTE: Due to the possibility that media interest might unduly–or prematurely–influence the chain of events, Liberty Headlines did not reach out to Gaudette for comment.)
Whoever it is, with the confirmation vote stalled in the Senate for at least a week, pending an FBI investigation, there is ample time for new twists and turns to develop–and little chance that unnamed guest will remain a mystery after all is said and done.