(Video of Graham at bottom)

The morning and early afternoon phases of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings at the Senate Judiciary Committee have been largely a waste of time, as the congressional hearing format reared its usual ugly head in preventing an effective examination of the witnesses involved. And as Christine Ford is the only witness so far in the hearing, you would have hoped that the outside counsel brought in to take Ford through her allegations against DC Circuit Judge and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Rachel Mitchell from the Maricopa County, Arizona district attorney’s office, would have been able to do a thorough job of uncovering the details about the events she alleges.

It wasn’t a total loss for Mitchell, though. She did manage to poke enough holes in Ford’s story that would likely have resulted in killing the case were it in a court of law. First of all, Mitchell got Ford to admit she can’t say how she got to the party where she says Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, or how she got home. Second, she got Ford and her attorneys to admit her expenses, particularly the polygraph she took and says was a two-hour ordeal (despite it only resulting in two questions being passed along as evidence). Mitchell also got Ford to essentially throw her friend Leland Keyser, who rebutted the allegations by saying she doesn’t remember such a party in question and had never met Brett Kavanaugh. And she got Ford to admit she dated Chris Garrett, a Kavanaugh classmate who looks a lot like him.

Mitchell also managed to establish the point that in a responsible treatment of allegations like this the victim typically undergoes a forensic interview which could better establish the details before the allegation is made public, which is a very good point that damns the Democrats who have pimped Ford out as a tool to destroy Kavanaugh under the guise of caring about women who’ve endured sexual assaults. No such interview was conducted with Ford; instead, her allegation’s first true airing was in front of a Senate committee and a media circus.

Those are some major holes which would certainly be enough to create reasonable doubt. With more time one gets the impression Mitchell could have thoroughly destroyed the allegations. But we don’t get that.

The way this has played out should be infuriating to everybody. The Democrats seem to like it just fine. But that isn’t Sen. Lindsey Graham’s take on it. The South Carolina Republican, who seems to be making a remarkable comeback as a conservative since his “big brother” John McCain passed away, is a former prosecutor and understands how these things are supposed to be done, and he’s disgusted with it. And Graham pulled no punches in an impromptu press gaggle outside the hearing room…