Virginia’s Democrat Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has been accused of serious sexual assault. With the party silent, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asks, where’s the “believe all women” crowd this time?
After Governor Ralph Northam was discovered posing in a Ku Klux Klan robe in his medical school yearbook photo, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax looked in line for a promotion. Any ambition Fairfax had, however, was quickly dashed when Northam refused to resign, and Fairfax got hit with an accusation of sexual assault.
Stanford professor and active Democrat Vanessa Tyson claimed this week that Fairfax attacked her in a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Tyson says Fairfax physically forced her to perform oral sex on him, but the lieutenant governor has claimed that Tyson’s story is a “false allegation” and that their encounter was consensual.
“It’s not easy to dismiss her claims out of hand, and yet Fairfax is,” Carlson said on Tuesday. “And here’s the interesting thing: his Democratic colleagues are standing with him and against her.”
Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) told the Washington Examiner that while “You’ve got to take any accusation seriously,” he is currently taking Fairfax’ denial at face value. None of the party’s presidential contenders weighed in on the accusations, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) apparently pretending to take a phone call when asked whether he believed Tyson.
“In other words, in the space of just a few months, the standard for believing sexual assault accusers has changed completely,” Carlson continued.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process last year was stalled by multiple uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault. Then, unlike now, protesters descended on Capitol Hill demanding that lawmakers #believewomen, and Democrats were quick to side with Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
"Let me just say right at the outset, I believe Dr. Ford. I believe the survivor here," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut).
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) didn’t need corroborating evidence, saying instead that she believed Ford “because she’s telling the truth.” Meanwhile, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said that the presumption of innocence until proven guilty “makes it really difficult for victims and survivors of these kinds of traumatic events to even come forward.” Women like Ford “need to be believed,” she added.
Sanders issued a blanket statement of support to all survivors of sexual assault. “I hear you. I believe you. Thank you for speaking out,” the socialist senator declared.
On the media front, the Washington Post was the first major newspaper to report on Ford’s allegations, despite the lack of corroborating evidence. When Tyson approached the Post with her claim against Fairfax in 2017, the paper declined to publish the story, citing lack of evidence.
“It is just a he said-she said story, they said, pushed by some professor out in California,” Carlson commented. “The irony here is unbelievable. But it's definitely not worthy of print. Just so you know the standard.”
The Democratic party has been accused of sweeping sexual assault allegations against its own members under the rug before. As the Kavanaugh debacle dragged on and Democrats joined in the chorus of “we believe survivors,” one of their own, Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) was accused of assault by his ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan.
Monahan claimed that Ellison physically and verbally abused her in a fit of anger, but said that she was “smeared, threatened, (and) isolated” by the party when she spoke out. 2020 hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) said at the time that the party would let an internal investigation into the alleged incident “run its course,” while Sanders told the Washington Post he had “nothing” to say about it, before rushing away from reporters.
An investigation commissioned by the party in Minnesota concluded the allegations against Ellison were “unsubstantiated” and he was later elected attorney general.
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