Christine Blasey Ford testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018. (Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP)

I’ve made no secret of my skepticism of the account given by Christine Ford to the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the attempted groping some 37 years ago (maybe…we are never told the year) by a future Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. We’ve covered the holes ad nauseam: no year, no month, no location, no mode of transportation, no witnesses. But in a strange tale, this seemed to be one of the strangest features. According to Ford, she first told her husband of the incident when they were in marriage counseling following a home improvement project. From her statement:

I told my husband before we were married that I had experienced a sexual assault. I had never told the details to anyone until May 2012, during a couples counseling session. The reason this came up in counseling is that my husband and I had completed an extensive remodel of our home, and I insisted on a second front door, an idea that he and others disagreed with and could not understand. In explaining why I wanted to have a second front door, I described the assault in detail. I recall saying that the boy who assaulted me could someday be on the U.S. Supreme Court and spoke a bit about his background. My husband recalls that I named my attacker as Brett Kavanaugh.

Now there is this from RealClearInvestigations:

Palo Alto city records show that a building permit for an additional room and exterior door was issued to Ford and her husband on Feb. 4, 2008 — more than four years before the May 2012 therapy session where, she says, she first identified Kavanaugh as her attacker.

All the remodeling, including a new bathroom, was completed by February 2010. The only additional permits issued to Ford at her Palo Alto address are for “solar panels” on the roof, a “solar hot water system” in the garage, and an “electric vehicle charge station” for the driveway — all of which were issued after 2012.

Other documents, including health care-provider registration records, reveal that a marriage counselor listed Ford’s home address as her place of employment, ostensibly using the extra room and door for her clinical practice. That marriage therapist, Sylvia Adkins Randall, sold the home to the Fords in 2007, but continued to maintain the address for her business.

Contacted by phone, Dr. Randall expressed concern about her real estate transaction and prior relationship with Ford being reported.

“I don’t want it to be mentioned,” she said. “It’s personal.”

Randall is a licensed therapist who specializes in treating “disturbing memories from the past.” She supports Ford and described her allegation against Kavanaugh as “credible.”
…
Also casting doubt on Ford’s story is the fact she installed no such escape door at a second home, which property records show she and her husband own in Santa Cruz, Calif., less than five blocks from the beach.

Yet she recently told a close friend, according to media reports, that she has resisted purchasing a home without a second exit from the master bedroom. Without it, she said she would never feel safe.

“Obviously, something happened that traumatized her so much that she’s afraid of being trapped,” her friend Jim Gensheimer, a photojournalist who worked for the San Jose Mercury News, told the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 19.

Property records show Ford and her husband, Russell Ford, bought the beach house in 2007. This July – the same month Ford sent a letter to Feinstein accusing Kavanaugh of attacking her — Ford applied for permits to build a front porch and new decks at the home, located on Seaside Street in Santa Cruz. There is no application for a second front door, however, and the recent permits are the only ones applied for since 2007.

No evidence has emerged of any other exterior door construction at either of Ford’s homes, authorized or not.

While her statement gives the impression the home improvement project ended shortly before the marriage counseling, in fact, it was completed two years earlier and seems to have had much more to do with creating additional income than safety. Without access to floor plans, we can’t be sure, but it seems strange that a door that was used as a business entrance would have access to the living quarters…but this is California and you know how they roll. The fact that her new home does not have a second front door seems to run counter to her reported statements.

The more one examines Ford’s story, the flakier it gets. Meanwhile, the media is wetting itself over the idea that Kavanaugh once THREW ICE at someone in a college bar.