I’m quite familiar with that rule. It’s a rule for trial. In discovery, you ask those questions. This is not trial or discovery, so the exact reasoning for the rule may not apply, but were I Mitchell, I would not fear asking questions about the event in question. It’s all a lie, and we know all about what her lie entails. Maybe we don’t want to ask about her past traumas and make her more sympathetic or ask her about her degree and how distinguished she is, etc. but as to this event, ask away.
We already know the answers to any of the questions I was suggesting. The answers would be she doesn’t know, can’t remember or wou.ld have to name someone who would contradict her. She can’t name anyone because SHE doesn’t know what THEY would say. So she would be boxed in and shown that she can’t provide any details about things that should be remembered. The purpose of the questions would be to show she doesn’t remember anything about anything except that Kavanaugh jumped on her. And then, when people come forward and say that there was never any event like she describes, or others come forward and say they were at such a party, and Kavanaugh wasn’t there, she will be unable to dispute their accounts.
The only purpose of asking those questions is in a rapid summation where you ask 8-10 critical questions that any crime victim should be able to answer ... and let the successive "I don't know" answers hang in the air when you ask the last question: "So you don't know all those details, but you know it was Brett Kavanaugh who did this to you?"