Return to Blog #9: Mitchell’s report clearing Kavanaugh is worse than a joke

The Intercept Article

Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura wrote an October 3, 2018 article in The Intercept. The title of the article is: “PROSECUTORS DON’T BRING CASES THE WAY RACHEL MITCHELL’S KAVANAUGH MEMO SAYS — NOT EVEN IN HER OWN ARIZONA OFFICE.” (Emphasis added.)

“The memo sent the message the committee’s Republicans had presumably wanted and delivered it with the legitimacy of a career prosecutor’s assessment. But, beneath the surface, Mitchell’s memo on the Ford-Kavanaugh case obscures how prosecutors … actually decide when and how to pursue criminal cases.”

Mitchell’s findings are slanted at best. There was no weighing of the credibility of the accuser versus the accused….

“Nor was [her report] consistent with the training that Mitchell herself provides and relies on in handling her own cases.”

“Mitchell knows better. In the memo… she betrayed her training and the standards [she has] when vetting cases.”

Washington Post article

Prosecutor Deanna Paul wrote an article dated October 1, 2018 in the Washington Post. It’s entitled “Rachel Mitchell says her Kavanaugh report is what a ‘reasonable prosecutor’ would say. It’s not.” (Emphasis added.)

“Although this was not a criminal case, Mitchell’s role was more akin to a defense attorney than a prosecutor, and defenders are in no position to issue prosecution reports.”

“A reasonable prosecutor examines a case before reaching conclusions

Mitchell laments that the case is weak because “witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them.” Nothing is corroborated, because there’s been no investigation yet.”

“How she goes back to her victim population in Arizona is beyond imagination to me,” Linda Fairstein, former chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s Sex Crimes Bureau and career sex crimes prosecutor, told The Post. ‘It’s outrageous.’”

“If this were a trial, she would take the stand to explain her position. Her ‘expert opinion,’ created at the request of and paid for by the opposing side, would be subject to cross-examination for its basis and validity. Ford would also be allowed to hire an expert to testify on her behalf, too.

Instead, Mitchell has written an unchallenged document that the Republicans can rely on in the upcoming vote to confirm Kavanaugh.”

AZCentral article

Former prosecutors Dennis Burke, Brooker T. Evans, Roy Herrera, Melanie Kebler and Mark S. Kokanovich wrote an article dated October 8, 2018 entitled, “Why didn’t Rachel Mitchell know her role in Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation was a sham?” (Emphasis added.)

“An esteemed prosecutor should have known better than to get involved in such a partisan process….”

“Mitchell made a grave judgment error when — without the benefit of an impartial investigation — she agreed to question Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Mitchell compounded that grave error in her premature memorandum in which she jumped to conclusions, again without the benefit of an impartial investigation.”

“Rachel Mitchell agreed to work on Republicans’ behalf under improper circumstances and went further to author an unsubstantiated memo…” 

“A reasonable prosecutor would never draft such a memo before the investigation is complete.” 

“the memorandum was purely partisan and political, and bears no recognizable resemblance to a legal, prosecution memorandum.” 

“Her involvement in the hearing and her premature conclusions have tarnished her reputation, done damage to the rule of law, sown confusion for those who seek to do justice regarding serious allegations of sexual assault, and only obscured the central question regarding Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness to serve on the Supreme Court.”

New York Magazine article

Writer Christian Farias wrote an insightful article in which he cited a prosecutor who worked with and was trained by Ms. Mitchell. It’s entitled: “Rachel Mitchell’s Kavanaugh Report Just Tells Republicans What They Want to Hear.” (Emphasis added.)

“[V]ery little of what she writes is the work product of a serious sex-crimes prosecutor. For one, she limits herself to the small universe of facts known to the Senate…

The real reason no reasonable sex-crimes prosecutor would bring a case against Kavanaugh is that no reasonable sex-crimes prosecutor would even dare seek charges without first doing her due diligence… [S]o it’s madness to subject last week’s hearing and record to the familiar standards of proof that apply in American courtrooms.

What Mitchell’s memorandum to Senate Republicans does, more than anything else, is poke holes in Ford’s recollection. In that sense, the document tells the senators most interested in seeing Kavanaugh’s confirmation succeed exactly what they want to hear: that Ford is unreliable… By putting the onus on Ford to get all her ducks in a row and make perfect sense of her own story, Mitchell demands of Ford what no reasonable prosecutor would ever demand of an alleged victim calling for a full and fair investigation…

One of Mitchell’s former longtime deputies, Matthew Long, told Mother Jones that her 11th-hour memo to the Senate was “absolutely disingenuous” because it bore little resemblance to the kind of investigative work her own office handles… Long said, adding that Mitchell taught him that memory holes are typically “corroborative” of traumatic experiences. In another interview, Long charged that Mitchell “abandoned what she knows to be true in favor of being a political operative.”