Huge Report: Ford Friend/Ex-FBI Agent Allegedly Pushed Keyser To Alter Story
Leland Keyser, a high school friend of Christine Blasey Ford’s who allegedly was the only other female at the party where Ford says she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, reportedly felt pressured to “revisit” her statement by supporters of Kavanaugh’s accuser.
The allegation comes through a friend of Keyser’s, who told The Wall Street Journal that Keyser was pushed to change her initial statement that she knew nothing about the sexual assault Ford had alleged.
That statement, The Journal said, was “later updated to say that she believed but couldn’t corroborate Dr. Ford’s account, according to people familiar with the matter.”
However, Keyser also “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.”
The timeline of events — and who was involved — raises serious questions about those around Ford and how they tried to control the narrative.
“Ms. Keyser’s lawyer on Sept. 23 said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had no recollection of attending a party with Judge Kavanaugh, whom she said she didn’t know,” The Journal reported.
“That same day, however, she told the Washington Post that she believed Dr. Ford. On Sept. 29, two days after Dr. Ford and the judge testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Keyser’s attorney sent a letter to the panel saying his client wasn’t refuting Dr. Ford’s account and that she believed it but couldn’t corroborate it.
“A person close to the former classmates said it was her understanding that mutual friends of Dr. Ford and Ms. Keyser, including Ms. McLean, had contacted Ms. Keyser after her initial statement to warn her that her statement was being used by Republicans to rebut the allegation against Judge Kavanaugh. The friends told Ms. Keyser that if she had intended to say she didn’t remember the party — not that it had never happened — that she should clarify her statement, the person said, adding that the friends hadn’t ‘pressured’ Ms. Keyser.”
It’s worth noting that those close to Kavanaugh also called upon acquaintances to back up his side of the story, including encouraging friends “to go on record” when Deborah Ramirez’s allegations were published in The New Yorker.
There’s also no indication that Ford’s legal team was involved in getting McLean to talk to Keyser about revisiting her statement.
Nevertheless, the incident raises serious questions about the role that surrogates are playing in the investigation.
Keyser told investigators she didn’t feel “pressured” to change the statement to one more supportive — if not corroborative — of Ford’s allegations. However, the friend of Keyser’s who spoke to The Journal seems to have specifically mentioned that pressure was involved.
There’s also the fact that the mutual acquaintance who talked to Keyser was McLean, the retired FBI agent who a former boyfriend of Ford alleges received some form of coaching from Ford on the basics of a polygraph test. McLean has denied this.
Attorneys for Ford didn’t comment on the story.
So, what does this all mean? Like most of the Ford narrative, this is yet another strand in an intersecting web of uncorroborated allegations. It also makes things that much more complicated.
Whether or not this ended up pushing the scales on Keyser’s testimony remains to be seen — but it certainly makes this whole mess smell that much more rotten.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
