Kavanaugh accuser’s brother’s firm linked to Fusion GPS.
Christine Blasey Ford’s brother’s job history from 14 years ago has been pulled into widespread internet speculation about Ford’s accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Ford, a California professor, went public with her accusations against Kavanaugh earlier this week, saying he sexually assaulted her at a party while the two were in high school in the early 1980s. "I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation," Kavanaugh said in a statement. "I did not do this back in high school or at any time." YourNewsWire.com points to Ralph Blasey’s time at the law firm BakerHostetler from 1989 to 2004 as evidence that Ford is somehow linked to the Russia investigation. The blog post was cited in a news release from the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel as a "disturbing fact" that "undermine(s) her story." "Ford has a brother, Ralph Blasey, who worked for BakerHostetler, a law firm that retained Fusion GPS, the infamous DC company that produced the unverified Steele dossier on President Donald Trump and Russia, sparking the Russia investigation," the release states, linking to YourNewsWire.com. This story was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) This theory that somehow Ford is linked to the Russia investigation through her brother’s old job comes from the fact that in 2013, nine years after Blasey left BakerHostetler, the firm hired Fusion GPS, a consulting firm, to assist with a Russian money-laundering investigation. In 2015, Fusion GPS subcontracted with Christopher Steele, a British intelligence officer to produce the Russian dossier. Fusion GPS has said the two cases were unrelated. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, Ford’s lawyers said she had "been the target of vicious harassment and even death threats." They said as a result of those threats, her family relocated out of their home. The letter also said Ford’s email had been hacked and she had been impersonated online. Our ruling Ford’s brother, Ralph Blasey, worked for a law firm that worked with Fusion GPS nine years after he left the company. Fusion GPS’s work on the Russian dossier began more than a decade after Blasey left BakerHostetler. While it’s accurate to say Blasey worked for BakerHostetler — he says that clearly on his LinkedIn — it is ridiculously wrong to somehow link her brother’s past employment to Fusion GPS’s work in investigating Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com
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