Police in Maryland say they’re prepared to move on Brett Kavanaugh investigation

| 9:54 pm EDT September 21, 2018
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The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee gave an ultimatum to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford: show up and testify next week under unfavorable terms, or the committee would go ahead and vote without her. The deadline for her response was 10pm eastern time tonight. She sent a letter to the committee tonight, asking for one more day to make her decision. Far more important was what transpired at nearly the same time Ford sent her letter.

Tom Manger, the Chief of Police for Montgomery County, Maryland, announced tonight that “We are prepared to investigate if the victim wants to report to us, and we can determine it occurred in the County” (source). This is a given, of course, as the local police were always going to be willing to investigate this if a report was filed. What’s newsworthy here is that the police chief suddenly decided to make this announcement this evening, just as the GOP’s deadline was arriving, and just as Dr. Ford is asking for one more day to make her decision.

The question of course is why Dr. Ford would need one more day. The parameters of her decision aren’t going to be any different tomorrow than they are tonight – or are they? Earlier today Palmer Report pointed out that Ford’s goal here is clearly to keep Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court, and she’s trying to convince him to drop out of the nomination. She pushed for the FBI to investigate because that provided the greatest odds of Kavanaugh ending up in prison, and thus the greatest threat to him. Her next logical step would be to go ahead and file a report with local police, and start turning the screws against Kavanaugh accordingly.

We have no way of knowing precisely what’s going on tonight. But the timing of the police statement tonight is conspicuous, to say the least, and it raises all kinds of questions about just why Dr. Christine Blasey Ford needs an extra day before announcing her decision. To be clear, she’s not even asking to testify one day later; she’s just saying she does’t want to announce her decision until tomorrow. Is it because she plans to file that police report tomorrow? Was the statement from the police chief made in conjunction with this? Stay tuned.