“Follow the money,” as Deep Throat said in All The President’s Men.
That’s just what writer Paul Sperry did for Real Clear Investigations in its probe of the cash bonanza Christine Blasey Ford now enjoys thanks to accusing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of attempted rape.
The prosecutor who questioned Ford said that her own witness “refuted” and “failed to corroborate” the scurrilous accusation.
But that hasn’t stopped Ford, a wealthy woman to begin with, from walking away with a bundle of money.
The Latest
The New American reported in September that GoFundMe accounts set up by Ford’s sympathizers had amassed $750,000.
But that figure has grown, Sperry reported, adding details about Ford’s significant personal assets and the cushy sinecures she and her husband enjoy.
During her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sperry noted, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told Ford that she “had absolutely nothing to gain” by spinning her woeful but memory-challenged tale. In fact, she “stands to gain some $1 million and counting from national crowdfunding campaigns launched by friends and other supporters, while she is said to be fielding book offers.”
Ford’s “GoFundMe accounts have raised more than $842,000 for Ford, and the money is still coming in weeks after she testified and left the spotlight. The total does not include a third account collecting $120,000 for an academic endowment in her name.”
According to Sperry:
GoFundMe spokeswoman Katherine Cichy told RealClearInvestigations that Ford and her husband can withdraw as much as they want whenever they want for any purpose. Payments would be electronically deposited into the Fords’ bank account within two to five business days of initiating withdrawals.
Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh joined the line of 21,000 other suckers and gave her $10,000.
Free Lawyers and Big Homes
“Some question the necessity of the financial assistance,” Sperry reported, “given that much of the costs associated with Ford’s testimony — including all of her legal fees plus a polygraph examination — were covered by Democratic attorneys assigned to her by the Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Nor did she pay the costs of the investigation or for her security from the Senate Sergeant at Arms and Capitol Police.
Ford claimed, dramatically enough, that “My family and I were forced to move out of our home,” but the committee was “not provided with specifics of any threats against Dr. Ford.”
Yet Ford’s travails and those “threats” inspired two GoFundMe accounts that have pulled in nearly $650,000 and more than $200,000, respectively.
Yet consider, Sperry wrote, her personal assets:
The Fords bought [their] beach home along with their Palo Alto home in 2007, after selling a historic bed and breakfast for more than $1.5 million. The Victorian-style B&B located near La Selva Beach, Calif., featured seven bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms and tennis courts on 1.3 acres, and also served as their private residence.
Their “main home” — most Americans have only one home — is worth more than $3.3 million, while the beach house is “$1.03 million at today’s prices.”
Though both homes are mortgaged, the Fords “spent tens of thousands of dollars refurbishing the B&B and renovating their Palo Alto house, including adding a room with a second front door to rent out to tenants (Ford testified she added the door owing to “claustrophobia” and other residual anxiety from the alleged Kavanaugh assault).”
And the Fords applied for a building permit to renovate the beach home just before she accused Kavanaugh in a letter to fellow millionairess Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). The renovation includes an addition of 500 square feet, “along with a new front porch and new decks.”
“Ford’s defenders,” Sperry wrote, claim “it is absurd to suggest that she was aiming to cash in on such a traumatic chapter in her life.” Maybe, but the big payday seems to have landed at just the right time to complete those expensive renovations.
Good Jobs, Big Salaries
How do Ford and her husband afford it?
She’s a professor at the leftist Palo Alto University, where the “typical PAU professor” earns $150,000 annually. “She has written or helped write more than 50 books, journals and articles,” she consults for pharmaceutical companies, and “she is also director of biostatistics for Corcept Therapeutics, a Menlo Park, Calif., drug development firm with $160 million in sales, for which she’s worked since 2003.”
Meanwhile, her husband, Russell, “is a Silicon Valley biomechanical engineer and inventor who holds several patents on medical devices.”
Of course, Sperry observed, Ford had a political reason to hit Kavanaugh with an attempted rape accusation after Democrats failed to derail him with other lies. She’s a Democrat and contributor to kook socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley told Sperry that GoFundMe provides an incentive for people to say things that might not be true. “Millions of people can effectively pay you to take a particular [political] position,” he said. “It raises new questions that are pretty darn troubling.”
Continued Turley, “you could have people effectively in a market for witnesses. You could buy a witness.”
Follow the money.
