Rachel Mitchell’s former colleague slams her Kavanaugh memo as ‘absolutely disingenuous’

Rachel Mitchell’s former colleague slams her Kavanaugh memo as ‘absolutely disingenuous’

Mother Jones reports:

A former colleague of Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor hired by Senate Republicans to question Christine Blasey Ford, blasted Mitchell for writing a memo casting doubt on Ford’s allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Matthew Long, a former sex crimes prosecutor who was trained by Mitchell in the Maricopa County, Arizona, attorney’s office, told Mother Jones the memo was “disingenuous” and inconsistent with Mitchell’s own practices as a prosecutor. “I’m very disappointed in my former boss and mentor,” Long said.

On Sunday, Mitchell submitted the memo to the Republicans who had hired her, stating that Ford’s case would be too weak to bring charges in a criminal trial. “A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove,” Mitchell wrote. “But this case is even weaker than that…I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee.”

The memo rankled Long, beginning with how Mitchell framed it. “I find her willingness to author this absolutely disingenuous. She knows better,” Long said. “She should only be applying this standard when there’s an adequate investigation.” Rather than jump to conclusions, Mitchell should have laid out the steps that needed to be taken in order to gather enough information to make a determination about the case. “Mitchell doesn’t have sufficient information to even draw these conclusions,” he said. [Continue reading…]

When Sen. Grassley announced that the Republicans had hired Mitchell, it seems noteworthy that he said she had “stepped forward” and that she “came to the committee staff” — in other words, it sounds very much like she sought out this position rather than that she was found. The implication being that rather than serving to “de-politicize the process,” Mitchell came with her own agenda. The contents of her memo make it apparent that, at least in part, that agenda was to defend the nomination of Kavanaugh.

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