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.

'Justice' is the word

I found it ironic that Merriam-Webster chose the word ‘justice’ as its word of the year for 2018. They said in a statement, “The concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year: racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice.” Then they mentioned some newsworthy events in which they say justice played a role. The Mueller investigation was the most prominent one. They cited the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as another.

Neither case radiated much justice. We’ve been told for 19 months now that there was some sort of collision between President Trump and the Russians. Now we’re bogged down in a debate over whether or not hush money to a mistress constitutes a campaign contribution. If so, what kind of campaign work did Stormy Daniels do for the money? 

Then there’s Brett Kavanaugh. Not much justice there. Oh yes, he made it onto the Supreme Court, but at what cost? His entire life was dragged through the mud. He was made out by the left to be a rapist. His family was put through untold torture and humiliation just because the Democrats in the senate couldn’t get past the notion that the president of the United States, whoever he is, gets to pick whomever he chooses for the court, so long as they’re qualified. And Justice Kavanaugh most certainly is. Michael Avenatti, the creepy porn lawyer for Stormy Daniels, surfaced during the hearings with supposed bombshell allegations against Kavanaugh that proved to be totally unfounded. Still, the damage was done. Justice?

Too many people measure justice by whether or not they get their way. One of the dictionary definitions of ‘justice’ is “the administering of deserved punishment or reward.” Kavanaugh may have technically gotten the ‘reward,’ but confirmation to the Supreme Court is not about the individual justice. It’s about seating the court with qualified jurists. Where’s the deserved punishment? Christine Blasey Ford had not one shred of evidence, and those whom she claimed were witnesses had no recollection of the event in question. Was there any downside for her? Quite the contrary. She walked away with a hefty payday from crowd sourcing and is probably in negations for a huge book deal.

You want to know what justice really is? Justice is allowing the person the American people elected as their president to do his job. Chuck Schumer actually had the audacity to tell President Trump that elections have consequences. This from a leader who just lost the senate…again. The president reminded him that elections do have consequences, and that’s why we’re doing so well. 

Justice is a wall. The wall the American people wanted when they elected Donald Trump president. 

Justice is bringing to a close this endless harassment of the president over Russia. Despite the perjury traps and convictions totally unrelated to Trump, the relentless pursuit of impeachment continues.

Justice is allowing Supreme Court nominees to answer civil questions about their qualifications and not have their reputations torched in the process.

Justice is abiding by an election without snowflakes melting down like it was Armageddon.

Justice is media coverage of a president that isn’t 92 percent negative just because those reporting it hate him.

Merriam-Webster based their choice of ‘justice’ in part on how many people searched for the word on their site. A spokesman for the company said people didn’t look up the word because they didn’t know how to spell it. They were looking for its true meaning. Perhaps that’s because they don’t recognize it in today’s political landscape.

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

More than Kavanaugh, this is for November

The Democrats insist that the confirmation proceedings surrounding Brett Kavanaugh are not a trial. They could not be more wrong. But it’s not a trial of Brett Kavanaugh. This is the trial of the Republican Party writ large. That’s why I went against the grain of many of those on my side of this issue to call for an FBI investigation even before Sen. Jeff Flake did. This is seen as capitulation by many. In actuality it’s a necessary step toward justice.

By noon on the day of the infamous dueling testimony of Dr. Christine Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh it was clear Kavanaugh’s nomination had taken a torpedo under the water line. To simply ignore Dr. Ford’s testimony or hope its impact would subside was folly. Her testimony was compelling. That’s not to say that the events as she described them were believable, but she, herself, was. How can that be? How can someone be lying and simultaneously believable? There are multiple explanations.

Some believe that something traumatic happened to Dr. Ford. Could it be something really did happen? If so, how could she so vividly remember the details of the layout of the inside of the house yet have no idea where the house was? I haven’t given up on the theory of false memory syndrome. We may never know. The inconsistencies of her testimony, however, did not erase the doubt about Brett Kavanaugh in many people’s minds.

Kavanaugh’s testimony was equally compelling. The left attacked him for being so forceful, but if you had been accused of the atrocious crimes he was accused of you would lash out too. Kavanaugh’s testimony may have tilted public opinion back toward him, but it did not undo the damage that had been done that morning by Dr. Ford’s testimony. So why is public opinion so important? Because this is not just about another seat on the Supreme Court. This is about November. And that’s why Republicans should not only have welcomed an FBI investigation, they should have insisted on one.

You lawyers know testimonial damage when you see it. Kavanaugh took a direct hit, and thus so did the Republican Party. When such damage is done you don’t simply clean up the debris and move on, you have to repair the damage.

What will an FBI investigation accomplish? If you’re a Republican you hope it accomplishes two things. First, it must corroborate what the Senate Judiciary Committee already uncovered. That being that Dr. Ford has one memory of the night in question, the witnesses she identified have an entirely different account. In other words, it’s not he said/she said, it’s she said/they said. The second thing the Republicans hope to accomplish is to get the FBI’s seal of approval stamped on the facts as we know them. Peter Strzok notwithstanding, the majority of Americans still have a tremendous amount of faith in the FBI.

The Democrats already are learning this can blow up in their faces. A recent poll in Missouri shows half the voters are now less likely to re-elect Democrat Claire McCaskill because of her opposition to Judge Kavanaugh. Her GOP opponent has slipped ahead by two points. In Tennessee, senate candidate Phil Bredesen is afraid to take a side. This is not quite going as the Democrats had envisioned.

If Republicans allow Lindsey Graham to make a point-by-point presentation of the FBI’s findings to the Senate just prior to the vote then this thing’s over. If several Democrats end up voting in favor of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation then so, perhaps, is November.

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