Rachel Mitchell's Former Colleague Calls Her Brett Kavanaugh Memo 'Absurd' and 'Absolute Bullshit' 

An Arizona defense attorney who considers prosecutor Rachel Mitchell a mentor told Mother Jones that he was “very disappointed” by her “disingenuous” conclusions from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

Matthew Long, who worked as a prosecutor for 12 years, first under Mitchell and then as a colleague in a neighboring county, told Mother Jones that Mitchell’s memo to Republicans was “absolutely disingenuous” and that Mitchell “knows better.” Senate Republicans hired Mitchell to question Dr. Christine Blasey Ford on Thursday about her allegation that Kavanaugh assaulted her in high school, essentially putting Ford on trial. Mitchell did not subject Kavanaugh to such questioning.

In the memo, Mitchell said Ford’s testimony was “even weaker” than a “he said she said case,” in part because the witnesses Ford named “either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them.” Mitchell did not take into consideration, however, that the FBI had not conducted an investigation, and multiple witnesses who came forward with relevant testimony were turned away by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Long called Mitchell’s conclusion “absolute bullshit,” explaining, “all we have are these signed statements, which are unreliable. They’re hearsay. They wouldn’t meet any type of standard Ms. Mitchell would allow in considering their statements, but instead would have demanded they be interviewed in a full-blown interview to really flesh out these people’s motivations.”

From Mother Jones:

The memo rankled Long, beginning with how Mitchell framed it. “I find her willingness to author this absolutely disingenuous. She knows better,” Long said. “She should only be applying this standard when there’s an adequate investigation.” Rather than jump to conclusions, Mitchell should have laid out the steps that needed to be taken in order to gather enough information to make a determination about the case. “Mitchell doesn’t have sufficient information to even draw these conclusions,” he said.

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Long next attacked a section of the memo in which Mitchell focused on Ford’s inability to recall certain details about the circumstances of the assault, including whose house she was at, who invited her, how she got there, and how she got home. “The spotty memory Ms. Mitchell talks about, as if that’s an indication it didn’t happen, is just absurd,” he said. “Again, I was trained by Ms. Mitchell about how trauma explicitly does prevent memory from happening.”

“Her only analysis should have been: The process you’ve given me, the information we have, is insufficient,” he said. Noting that Mitchell did not scrutinize Kavanaugh’s testimony—the man whose conduct and character is under question by the Senate—Long concluded: “Rachel Mitchell’s failure to include any analysis of Kavanaugh reveals her political bias.”