Fox Business guest on Christine Blasey Ford: “She was far from being raped ... It was all a fumbled attempt to make out with a girl at a party”
Sidney Powell: There was “certainly no description of anything any prosecutor that I know of would actually call a sexual assault”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the September 27 edition of Fox Business' Cavuto: Coast to Coast:
SIDNEY POWELL (FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR): This is quite the spectacle. I think we expected that. I do think the Republican senators were well-advised to have the prosecutor ask the questions because they were going to be made out to be the bad guys completely if they had done this themselves. And, as I expected, the Democratic senators are making wonderful speeches to extol her virtues and courage in coming forward.
One of the things that really concerns me though is how broad a definition we are using here of the term, “sexual assault.” Most prosecutors and laws define that as being rape. She was far from being raped. She hasn't even alleged that any body part was exposed. She said he tried to take her clothes off, supposedly, but nothing came off apparently. It was all a fumbled attempt to make out with a girl at a party it sounds like. And, there are just all kinds of problem with it aside from the fact that there is absolutely no corroboration. It's a recovered memory, which are suspect and difficult to begin with. But even if she had reported all of these facts at the time it happened, now 36 years ago, I see nothing that a prosecutor would have found to prosecute.
If we start policing 17-year-old boys and 15-year-old girls at parties who try to make out with each other, we're going to have a big problem of over-criminalization.
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NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): To your point, there was no rape, there was no outright assault. But are the details getting lost in the overall appearance here of a woman who comes across -- comes across, I should say -- as credible enough to give some of the senators on that panel who might be on the fence some doubt?
POWELL: Well, it will be interesting to see how many women actually find her credible. Frankly, I do not. The emotion that I'm seeing does not appear to me to be real at all anymore than it could be spawned from her being in this position to testify on national television with I don't know how many cameras literally in her face --
CAVUTO: Right, right.
POWELL: About this. And the shaky voice, to the extent it's there, could be nothing more being in that sort of spotlight and situation. There were certainly no tears. There were certainly no description of anything any prosecutor that I know of would actually call a sexual assault. So, if we take the names out of this, and pretend like we're just talking about a 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old -- sorry, a 17-year-old boy and a 15 -year-old girl, where do we want to draw the lines in terms of allowing people to assert criminal conduct in that kind of behavior?
Frankly I didn't even find her story credible about going up the stairs and all of a sudden being pushed from behind by somebody that she didn't know was there. Why was she going upstairs in the first place? That doesn't make any sense.
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POWELL: There are scads of cases of wrongful identification, particularly when you're dealing with the issue of recovered memory.
CAVUTO: Right.
POWELL: Which is what she has here. I mean, there's a whole book about misidentification called Picking Cotton, where a woman wrongly accused a man of raping her. There's the Duke lacrosse rape case, which was reported at time and DNA even obtained, and they were indicted for something they didn't do. Another line we need to draw is, how far back are we going to let people go into anyone's life to try to stir up something or make allegations? And how long are we going to let people come out with allegations against somebody that can't be corroborated and give them any credence at all?
Previously:
How right-wing media are attacking Christine Blasey Ford's Senate testimony