By CHARLES C. W. COOKE
The Wall Street Journal reports:
A friend of Christine Blasey Ford told FBI investigators that she felt pressured by Dr. Ford’s allies to revisit her initial statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh, which she later updated to say that she believed but couldn’t corroborate Dr. Ford’s account, according to
people familiar with the matter.
Leland Keyser, who Dr. Ford has said was present at the gathering where she was allegedly assaulted in the 1980s, told investigators that Monica McLean, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a friend of Dr. Ford’s, had urged her to clarify her statement, the people said.
This may explain why Keyser ended up in the rather silly — not to mention legally convenient — position of saying that she believed Ford, but also couldn’t remember any of the incidents that she supposedly saw.
This revelation has prompted many to suggest that McLean is guilty of witness tampering. Is she? Well, maybe. But it would be a heavy lift. 18 U.S. Code § 1512 holds that one is guilty of “tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant” if one “knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person.” Moreover, this law applies to those who “influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding.” Per § 1515(a)(1) “a proceeding before the Congress” counts as an “official proceeding.”
