Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell emerges as GOP choice to question Kavanaugh and accuser at hearin

[demmiblue]

Source: WaPo

Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell has emerged as Senate Republicans’ choice to question Brett M. Kavanaugh and the woman who has accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, according to two people familiar with the decision.

Mitchell, the sex crimes bureau chief for the Maricopa County Attorney’s office in Phoenix, is the leading candidate to query the two at Thursday’s highly anticipated hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to the individuals.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it on the record.

A registered Republican, Mitchell has worked for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for 26 years.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/arizona-prosecutor-rachel-mitchell-emerges-as-gop-choice-to-question-kavanaugh-and-accuser-at-hearing/2018/09/25/47964afa-c0ff-11e8-9005-5104e9616c21_story.html

[TomSlick]

1. Aunt Lydia is named.

They had to go all the way to Arizona to find a female lawyer that would do the job?

[Funtatlaguy]

6. Bless-ed day.

[demgrrrll]

17. As Josh Marshall so brilliantly stated OfSenate.

[Funtatlaguy]

19. The Trump Presidency movie is gonna be a doozy someday.

[klook]

30. Good one. Or is she a Martha?

But I like OfSenate.


Since she's from Maricopa County, maybe "OfJoe" is more appropriate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

38. You're not joking: Fundamentalist Baptist links

It turns out one of the only at-length interviews Mitchell has ever done is with a publication put out by the far right ‘fundamental baptist’ organization Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International (FBFI), an organization closely tied to Bob Jones University and espousing a range of hyper-traditionalist views on gender, sexuality and sexual ethics.

You can see the interview here. (Additional passages are included here and here.) Mitchell’s comments in the interview are not really controversial. The interview is about helping organizations and particularly churches develop standards and best practices for dealing with child sexual abuse.

What got my attention is how the interview came about. This is a publication and organization that espouses hyper-traditional positions on gender, sexual ethics and sexuality. So it makes me wonder: How did she come to give this interview to this organization and vice versa? It doesn’t seem like a big stretch to think that this may be part of her own worldview.

Everybody is entitled to their beliefs of course. But we’re already in a very odd framework with a totally or largely unknown person called in to handle the questioning in a pivotal encounter with huge amounts on the line for the entire country. It seems worth understanding and entirely reasonable to try to understand what set of beliefs on these issue she may bring to the questioning.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-is-rachel-mitchell

[TomSlick]

42. I self-deleted my original reply because I realized I had misread your post.

More haste, less speed.

[OliverQ]

2. She has connections to Arpaio. Holy crap this is corrupt.

[ooky]

24. As soon as I heard Rachel say "Maricopa County"

I knew this was another Republican setup and dirty trick. I suspect the objective of using this woman is to ask questions designed to maneuver Dr. Ford into coming across as not credible.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

25. You took the words right out of my mouth with this.

I cannot believe that this woman will be anything other than an Arpaio puppet, cut from the same cloth.

How pathetic.

A question for the more knowledgeable among us - do the Senate rules ALLOW for this outside person to question Dr. Ford ?

[7962]

27. If they didnt I'm sure the Dem senators would've already brought it up?

[Haggis for Breakfast]

32. Would that be like the Democrats

nominating a man for president that wasn't born a U S citizen ?

[RhodeIslandOne]

3. When did she sell her soul?

Can you imagine a prosecutor who I assume has to deal with victims of sexual abuse every day doing this?

[dchill]

4. Somehow, I feel that the Repubs just bunted into a...

Triple play. Those are going to be really bad optics.

[PJMcK]

5. Yep

This could go very badly for the Republicans.

[dchill]

7. It seems that they are completely insensitive to their insensitivity.

And unaware of their nakedness.

[Funtatlaguy]

8. 11 white male Senators don't know how to question a white woman. Ummmm.

[cstanleytech]

12. Oh they know how to do it but they want Kavanaugh at all costs so they are bringing this women in

not to find out the truth but rather as an attack dog.

[Funtatlaguy]

14. It's part of their job - they were elected and selected to this committee. Cowards.

[CottonBear]

35. Four of those male Republican Senators are Mormons.

I just found that out.😟

Link: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11182284

[Funtatlaguy]

37. Hopefully they are wearing their protective magic garments during icky sex talk.

[SkipG]

9. Hmm?

Just googled "Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell" and... her Arizona Bar bio and her interview with Proclaim & Defend (an Evangelical website) are no longer available.

[bucolic_frolic]

10. Beware

This appears to be the voice of authority with so much experience on her resume, but she could lob softballs at Kavanaugh and decline to ask the right questions of Dr. Ford.

I smell an attempted whitewash in the making.

[hlthe2b]

13. She is questioning in lieu of the 11 R Senators... The Dem Senators will question themselves.

though they are likely to defer largely to Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar

[bucolic_frolic]

36. Oh, she's the *GOP* front man

It's still a show trial. Grassley and Trump will dismiss all sexual assault allegations as Fake News. These are power hungry people living in their own mindset and reality.

[Arazi]

11. Thought it would be Pirro lol

[Dave Starsky]

39. Pirro would have to sober up first.

And I don't think that's possible under such short notice.

[.99center]

15. Now we know why R's were trying to keep her identity concealed.

Maricopa has a history of ignoring sexual assault.

Arpaio Is Criticized Over Handling Of Sex-Crimes Cases
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/us/sheriff-joe-arpaio-criticized-over-handling-of-sex-crimes-cases.html

GUADALUPE, Ariz. — Although Joe Arpaio calls himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” a growing chorus of local critics want another title for him: Retired.

Sheriff Arpaio, the top law enforcement official in sprawling Maricopa County, is perhaps best known for his hard-nosed treatment of prisoners and his aggressive raids aimed at illegal immigrants. But it is his department’s approach to more than 400 sex-crimes cases that has Sheriff Arpaio in trouble.

His deputies failed to investigate or conducted only the sketchiest of inquiries into hundreds of sex crimes between 2005 and 2007, investigations by Arizona law enforcement agencies have shown. Many of those cases involved molested children.

The cases were first raised by The East Valley Tribune in 2008 but resurfaced in the news media earlier this year and in a recent article by The Associated Press, which prompted Sheriff Arpaio to defend himself at a news conference. “If there were any victims, I apologize to those victims,” he said on Monday, vowing to hold deputies accountable.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-arpaio-misdeeds/

CLAIM: Refused to investigate alleged child sex crimes

STATUS: Mostly true.

As the East Valley Tribune‘s Ryan Gabrielson reported in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in 2008, Sheriff Arpaio’s personal obsession with immigration enforcement sapped county resources and led to a sharp decline in criminal investigations and arrests. Many of the cases that fell by the wayside involved sex crimes. “By Arpaio’s own admission, the number of uninvestigated sex crime cases eventually swelled to more than 400,” Gabrielson wrote in 2017. “Many of the victims were children.”

According to law enforcement officials cited in a 2011 Associated Press report, dozens of alleged child molestation cases in the county were inadequately investigated or “not worked at all”:

In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio’s office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 years old — where the sheriff’s office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases.

Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

28. Thank you for doing the research .99center

It galls me that everyday, there are more and more factual accounts, historical and political events and stories being obliterated, removed, buried and otherwise white-washed from sources. Air-brushed out of existence like they never happened. Like re-writing history

And to think that if Stumpy hadn't won the election, he was going to become a media mogul ala Rupert Murdoch and start his own news service. What a nightmare that would have become.

[QC]

16. Blessed be the fruit.

?itok=GAE877Og

[catbyte]

21. Blessed be...

[IMG][/IMG]

[QC]

22. !!!

[riversedge]

18. 432 sex crimes went uninvestigated. We do not forget.

I do not know what role she would have played in getting these done--at the time.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Agent Smith
? @anonycraig
58s58 seconds ago





Replying to @MosesDidItBest @B52Malmet

432 sex crimes went uninvestigated.

We do not forget.
0 replies 0 retweets 1 like







https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/arizona-prosecutor-rachel-mitchell-emerges-as-gop-choice-to-question-kavanaugh-and-accuser-at-hearing/2018/09/25/47964afa-c0ff-11e8-9005-5104e9616c21_story.html?utm_term=.993d061fce35



Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell emerges as GOP choice to question Kavanaugh and accuser at hearing


Speaking on Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sept. 25 sexual predators “don’t just do it a couple years and quit.” (Rhonda Colvin, Alice Li/The Washington Post)




By Sean Sullivan ,
Josh Dawsey and
Rosalind S. Helderman
September 25 at 9:00 PM

Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell has emerged as Senate Republicans’ choice to question Brett M. Kavanaugh and the woman who has accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, according to two people familiar with the decision.




.......................Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for the Senate Judiciary Committee declined to comment Tuesday night.


In a 2011 interview, Mitchell said she was drawn to sex crimes work after she was paired with a senior lawyer prosecuting a youth choir director after joining the office as a law clerk awaiting the results of her bar exam. “It was different than anything that I would have ever imagined it being,” she said. “It struck me how innocent and vulnerable the victims of these cases really were.”

She is now a supervisor, where her duties include analyzing legislative changes and managing other attorneys. In an interview earlier this year on a local NPR radio station, she talked about the nuts-and-bolts of the office’s adoption of a new sex crimes protocol, the first in office history, intended to improve the investigation and prosecution of cases. She said the new manual would ensure prosecutors “have something to look at to say, okay, these are the best practices, so that we can do the best we can for victims.”

[catbyte]

20. Goddamned cowards. They don't see fit to appoint a woman to the Committee,

but they'll hide behind one on Thursday.

[iluvtennis]

23. What a bunch of fking cowards the GOP senators on the Judiciary Committee are. Can't bring

themselves to have enough decency to question Prof Ford - just shameful. This is such a disgusting farce.

I hope the report I heard on MSNBC earlier today that McConnell doesn't have the votes to confirm is true.

And I'm praying we can turn the Senate as well as the House in November. So tired of this Trump shitshow.

[SHRED]

26. She is evil

Link to tweet

[JonLP24]

40. Sheriff Joe is always one of my examples

To show some cop departments just aren't interested in solving rape.

[PSPS]

29. Has Ford agreed to even respond to questions from third parties like this?

This isn't supposed to be a trial.

[idcdu]

31. What Ford ought to do is completely ignore Mitchell

and say, "Does the Republican Senators have any questions that they can ask directly, or should I take this to Rachel Maddow for a full unbiased interview with my fellow accusers. As I understand, there are three, and it isn't looking good for you, Republican Senators".

[onit2day]

33. What a farce. A he said she said without a prior investigation is

just a soap opera or republican grand standing on a victim of abuse. Kavanaugh is the only nominee out of 35 who went to the press during confirmation hearings which proves his guilt. Plus it was on a partisan republican network. The voice of the majority of Americans never matter to republicans in power.

[Fiendish Thingy]

34. Ford should refuse to answer any question not asked directly by a senator nt

[QED]

43. She is competent and knows her stuff

Yeah, I know it's Maricopa County formerly sheriffed by Joe.

She made a video explaining the "Duty to Report" laws for school personnel. My impression was that she knows her stuff and is experienced in prosecuting sexual abuse and sexual assault cases.

Please note that this doesn't mean I endorse what the GOP chickens are doing in bring her in to question Dr. Ford. Far from it. Just wanted to put my 2¢ in.