Hearsay ain't corroboration

Corroboration. It’s the big buzzword these days. The right is using it against Joe Biden much like the left used it against Brett Kavanaugh. We’re told that friends and family of Biden accuser Tara Reade can “corroborate” her story that Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago. Why? Because she told them. Let’s get one thing clear. Telling someone something is not corroboration, it’s hearsay. There’s a big difference.

The legal distinction is very important. Hearsay is only allowed under certain circumstances in a court of law. One exception is what’s known as the Present Sense Impression rule. This is “a statement describing or explaining an event or condition, made while or immediately after the declarant perceived it.” This would appear to apply to witnesses who heard Reade describe the alleged incident with Joe Biden, however it is still hearsay and not corroboration.

Anyone can make up a story about anyone else and tell everybody they know. That still doesn’t make it true. This is not a defense of Joe Biden. This is a defense of the presumption of innocence, the bedrock of our judicial system.

That’s not to say that Joe Biden hasn’t done some creepy things. He’s famous for invading people’s space and sniffing hair. That may be a bit on the sketchy side. It may even constitute sexual harassment, but it is not sexual assault.

This so-called corroboration was used extensively during the hit job on Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated by President Trump to take a seat on the Supreme Court. At the time, conservatives derided the so-called corroboration of Christine Blasey Ford’s story by people claiming she had told them about the incident with Kavanaugh as simply hearsay. Now they accept the same sort of contemporaneous accounts as corroboration.

There’s a particular example of this that needs to be noted. A student at the University of Virginia called her friends in the middle of the night to report that she had been gang-raped by a bunch of fraternity brothers. She gave a vivid accounting of the alleged crime complete with the fraternity involved. Rolling Stone magazine picked up the story, using her friends’ accounts as corroboration. The university shut down the Greek system. The fraternity house was vandalized. A few months later, Rolling Stone had to issue a retraction and an apology. The whole thing was made up, including the story told to friends. Some corroboration. They only corroborated what they had been told, and they were told a complete and utter lie.

Conservatives must not fall into this same trap. A court of law needs much more than just a story told by the alleged victim to make a case. That’s not to say that Tara Reade doesn’t have a case. It’s just that her case doesn’t hinge on what she told family and friends 27 years ago.

Were the roles reversed conservative skeptics would be asking why now? Why didn’t she at least bring these allegations up in 2008 and 2012 when Biden was on the ticket with Barack Obama? Enemies of Biden are hoping to dig through mountains of senate records to find a smoking gun in a report filed by Reade in 1993. She’s already tamped down expectations by saying that it probably doesn’t include the language “sexual assault” or “sexual harassment.” She says she told authorities at the time that Biden made her feel uncomfortable. Heck, we can all say that. Ever watched one of his interviews?

Reade’s allegations should be thoroughly investigated, but just because she told somebody doesn’t mean the story has been corroborated. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Where does #MeToo go after Kavanaugh?

I’m sitting here wondering how all of the pink hat ladies can reconcile the fact that they so opposed Justice Kavanaugh because of some unsubstantiated claim of sexual assault yet they turned out in droves to support Hillary Clinton who has a long history of covering up for an alleged predator. It does really make one question the sincerity of the movement. And to see Hillary herself in interviews day after day saying we have to believe the women. Not one interviewer confronted her with the ugly truth that she was in charge of “bimbo eruptions” while her husband was running for president and after he won.

The Democrats aren’t through with Brett Kavanaugh. They vow to impeach him if they take control of Congress. All the more reason that these people shouldn’t be anywhere near the keys of power. Someone needs to remind them that you can only be impeached for conduct while you’re in office. That goes for justices and presidents. In other words, they can’t reach back in the histories of Kavanaugh and Trump and remove them from office. Chances are if they ignore their own inconsistencies on sexual assault they’ll ignore the Constitution too.

I was told of a conversation with a drunk millennial recently. The night after Kavanaugh’s confirmation he insisted “the bastard is guilty.” When pressed on what he was guilty of he eventually had to confess that he hadn’t followed the story and didn’t really know what he was accused of. But whatever it was, he was guilty.

Both sides engage in this type of judgement against the other all too often. We all have our preconceived notions and we all make our assumptions. However, when it comes to something like sexual assault it is totally irresponsible to assume guilt. Should we #BelieveSurvivors? If they’re really survivors of sexual assault, sure. That’s the problem. We have no idea how many of these unsubstantiated claims are made up. We have no idea how many of these women screaming at senators claiming they’re “survivors” have actually survived anything. That’s not to diminish the horror that victims of sexual assault have gone through. Quite the contrary. Those who have been proven to be victims deserve our deepest sympathy and their attackers deserve our fiercest rage. But just claiming someone did something is not—and should not be—good enough for victim status.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the whole Kavanaugh circus it’s that there’s now a new standard when it comes to sexual assault. If you’re accusing a conservative, you’re automatically believed. If you’re accusing a liberal, then the burden of proof is on you. We saw this with Bill Clinton. We saw this in the midst of the Kavanaugh hearings with Rep. Keith Ellison. Here’s a guy with far more evidence against him than Kavanaugh, yet a lawyer from a law firm that gave $500,000 to Democrats says she could find no evidence against him.

The left tried to tell us that normal standards of proof didn’t apply to Brett Kavanaugh because this wasn’t a trial, it was a job interview. OK, let’s go with that. So you’re saying that anybody who applies for a job can be immediately disqualified if someone just accuses him of something?

When this #MeToo movement first started I joked with a female conservative activist friend of mine on the air about this being a conspiracy to silence men. She laughed. She’s not laughing any more. Make no mistake about it, this is a war against men. Specifically white men. No one should be silenced through false allegations.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.