Conflict...

 

The problem for Christine Blasey Ford is not that she doesn’t remember everything: It is that everything she remembers changes at her convenience. 

First, Ford’s testimony that the assault occurred in the summer of 1982, when just 15, conflicted with both her therapist’s notes and the text message Ford sent to the Washington Post. According to reporter Emma Brown, Ford claimed she had been assaulted in the mid-1980s; and the therapist’s notes stated Ford had been the victim of an attempted rape in her late teens. But by that time, Kavanaugh was attending Yale, so Ford’s recasting of the attack to the summer of 1982 is suspect.

Ford’s retelling of the alleged sexual assault also included several conflicting accounts of the number of individuals at the gathering. The therapist’s notes stated that four boys had attempted to rape Ford. (Ford claims her therapist confused the total number of boys at the party with the number of boys who had attacked her.) 

Later, in her July letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Ford again placed the number of individuals at the party at five, stating the gathering included her and four other individuals. But Ford then identified the four by name, and that group included three boys and one girl. And finally, during her Senate testimony, Ford unequivocally stated that “there were four boys I remember specifically being there,” in addition to her friend Leland Keyser.

Another significant change in the scenario came when Ford testified about the location of the party. She had originally told the Washington Post that the attack took place at a house not far from the country club. Yet, when Mitchell revealed a map of the relevant locations and reminded Ford that she had described the attack as having occurred near the country club, Ford backtracked: “I would describe [the house] as it's somewhere between my house and the country club in that vicinity that’s shown in your picture.”  Ford added that the country club was a 20-minute drive from her home. 

Finally, Ford altered her description of the interior layout of the home and the details of the party and her escape.  A “short” stairwell turned into a “narrow” one. The gathering moved from a small family room where the kids drank beer (and which Ford distinguished from the living room through which she fled the house) when she spoke to the Washington Post, to a home described in her actual testimony as having a "small living room/family room-type area.” And in an obvious tell to the change, Ford suggested that she could draw a floor plan of the house.

These four points are significant. First, because Ford had waited 30-plus years to report the purported attack, a therapist’s notes from Ford's sessions with her husband countered claims that Ford had invented the assault to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation. But the notes did not name Ford’s attacker. And the timing of the assault summarized by her therapist, whom Ford saw individually the following year, conflicted with Ford’s current claims against Kavanaugh.

The final three contradictions are even more significant because in each circumstance Ford altered her story only after Kavanaugh and Senate investigators had obtained evidence to disprove her original tale. For instance, investigators had obtained statements from Kavanaugh and the two men and one female lifelong friend of Ford’s, and they all denied any recollection of the gathering. [Margot Cleveland, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET Oct. 3, 2018]

The Victim...

Escape...

Notorious French robber Redoine Faid was apprehended during the night in the Oise region north of Paris along with three other men including his brother, media reports.

A massive manhunt was launched after Faid's daring July 1 escape, in which two heavily armed accomplices used smoke bombs and angle grinders to break through doors and whisk him to a waiting helicopter.

Two men posing as flight school students, who had already taken an introductory flight, forced a helicopter instructor at gunpoint to fly them to the jail.

The terrified pilot landed in the courtyard.

Faid had been serving a 25-year term over a botched 2010 heist in which a policewoman was killed, though he claims her death was accidental.

What's in the name? More than we think.

Saxony...

Six men were arrested on suspicion of forming a far-right terrorism group called “Revolution Chemnitz.” The men are accused of planning armed attacks on “foreigners”,  Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office.

The men are associated with the “skinhead, hooligan and neo-Nazi” scene near the city of Chemnitz.  

Five of the detained men allegedly attacked and injured foreign-born residents of Germany with glass bottles and an electroshock weapon on Sept. 14 in Chemnitz,  

Violence against migrants is a growing issue in Germany. In 2017, refugees were targeted in 1,713 criminal acts, according to the advocacy group Pro Asyl and the Berlin-based Amadeu Antonio Foundation. Migrants on the other hand ganged together and sexually assaulted hundreds of women on New Year and plant bombs in concerts etc. The politicians couldn't solve the flood of refugees at their doorsteps.

The region of Saxony, where Chemnitz is located, is a stronghold for far-right party, the Alternative for Deutschland, and has long struggled with neo-Nazi aggression.

The Wall...

Asssylum Mills...

NPR's Planet Money has learned that more than 13,500 immigrants, mostly Chinese, who were granted asylum status years ago by the U.S. government, are facing possible deportation due to fraud claims.

Immigration officials are moving against these immigrants in a sweeping review that federal authorities say is related to a 2012 investigation into asylum mills. During that probe, federal prosecutors in New York rounded up 30 immigration lawyers, paralegals and interpreters who had helped immigrants fraudulently obtain asylum in Manhattan's Chinatown and in Flushing, Queens. The case was dubbed Operation Fiction Writer.

Authorities accused them of dumping boilerplate language in stories of persecution, coaching clients to memorize and recite fictitious details to asylum officers, and fabricating documents to buttress the fake asylum claims.

The saga continue.

Backfired...

It turns out that a fitness tracker can do more to betray you than showing your friends and families you're a couch potato. It can also undermine your claims about being a victim of a crime.

A Florida woman traveled to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where she stayed at her boss's home. Police were called to the home where they found overturned furniture, a knife and a bottle of vodka. Jeannine Risley told police she'd been sleeping and that she was woken up around midnight and sexually assaulted by a "man in his 30s, wearing boots." However, Risley was wearing her Fitbit band at the time. She initially said that the Fitbit had been lost in the struggle, but police found it in a hallway and when they downloaded its activity, the device became a witness against her.

The device showed Risley was awake and walking around at the time she claimed she was sleeping.

No footprints in the snow around the home. Her boss, telling police that Risley was about to lose her position with the company.
Local authorities charged her with "false reports to law enforcement, false alarms to public safety, and tampering with evidence" for upending the furniture.  

Vin Diesel..

Connie Dabate was shot dead in her home December 2015. Her husband, claimed he left for work around 8:30, only to return a half-hour later to see “a masked man — about 6-foot-2 and stocky with a Vin Diesel voice.”  

When the police started inspecting the couple’s digital footprints they found the husband’s story more full of holes than a Swiss cheese firing range.

First, the home security system recorded no signs of a struggle, and the alarm only went off an hour after the alleged altercation. Second, forty minutes after she was supposed to be shot, Connie posted two videos to Facebook.

Finally, the smoking gun, Connie’s Fitbit, which she’d worn to the gym, showed her walking around her home an hour after her husband said she’d been killed. She walked 1,217 feet total. The husband was arrested.

Blessed...

My Doll...