But, we can never forget the seriousness of the charge regardless of how big of a lie the charge was.
The committee's findings illustrate how complicated it is to sift truth from falsehood embedded in memories decades old, which become ambiguous motivations to be tried only in a court of inflamed public opinion. Justice Kavanaugh rightly described certain accusations as coming from "The Twilight Zone." But they made headlines, and the Grassley report repudiating them did not.
The central fact of the Ford allegations is the explicitly acknowledged fact that she “recovered” that memory under psychoanalysis. I put scare quotes around “recovered” because if the patient and the therapist both want the patient to “recover” a memory, the process is pretty much guaranteed to do it. That does not mean that the memory which is “recovered” does in fact relate to historical fact - if the target is very lucky, he might be able to disprove the veracity of the memory - but notice that I do not put scare quotes around “memory.” The patient who “recovers” a memory cannot tell the difference between the “recovered” memory and the real thing.In effect, the patient becomes sort of a contaminated jury who, having been subjected to a “prosecution” testimony by prosecutor who does not follow rules of fundamental fairness, finds the defendant guilty. The patient, if “believe the victim” rules of evidence apply, will inevitably succeed in convicting the defendant in a court of law because she knows she is relating what her memory tells her. So the poor schlub accused by a woman - or man, but especially a “poor, abused, woman" - has a desperate problem on his hands. Since the “recovered” memory will (supposedly) be of some long-ago event, he will have very scant chance of having the ability to disprove the charge. Very few escape.
Because this is known, “recovered” memory does not belong in a courtroom - or much of anywhere else. I am astonished that no public figure has pointed this out wrt the Ford testimony.
None of this discussion disproved the likelihood that Ford connived with her FBI friend to cook up the whole story - it just means that, given the putative provenance of the memory she testified to, her testimony is not probative. You can’t take a thing in it to the bank.