Among the conspiracy theories peddled by the right against Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during their prep-school years we can now add Newsmax columnist James Hirsen’s claim, in his Oct. 1 column, that Ford is making her accusations in order to profit from crowdfunding:
In a September 2018 appearance on “CBS This Morning,” a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Kamala Harris, D-Calif., opined that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had “nothing to gain” in stepping forward with allegations against Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
A few days later in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin, D-Ill., stated in the form of a question to the host a similar opinion.
“What in the h*** did she have to gain by doing this?” Durbin queried.
History suggests that there are a host of significant gains that may indeed be awaiting Ford. One has already surfaced via a digital platform. It arrived in the form of “crowdfunding,” i.e., the practice of financing a venture or cause by raising money from a large number of people utilizing specialized websites on the Internet.
Two crowdfunding accounts on the GoFundMe website, which were made on behalf of Ford, have raised approximately $740,000. For reasons unknown, at present the two GoFundMe accounts are no longer accepting donations.
[…]George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley recently expressed concern that crowdfunding may be being used in a manner that enables legal testimony to be purchased.
“You can buy a witness effectively by funding them as long as they’re saying the type of thing that you want them to say,” Turley cautioned.
The notion that money could potentially be used to purchase testimony from favorable witnesses poses a threat to a functioning legal system and the fundamental precepts of due process.
In the end, it is not merely about what an individual has to gain, but rather what our country and her people have to lose.
Needless to say, Hirsen offers no actual evidence to back up his speculative conspiracy theory.