【Ongoing Series Archives】

UPDATE: September 21,Ongoing Series Archives 2018, 9:33 a.m. ESTEd Whelan deleted the Twitter thread on Friday after serious backlash. On Friday morning, he tweeted the following:

"I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake."

The original post appears below.

This hasto be a glitch in the simulation, right?

Ed Whelan, a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and conservative lawyer, tried to use Zillow to prove Brett Kavanaugh's innocence and ended up going down a deep, deep rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory.

SEE ALSO: #DearProfessorFord: Actresses support Brett Kavanaugh's accuser ahead of hearings

Kavanaugh, Trump's pick to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, was accused of sexual assault by former classmate Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Although Kavanaugh's nomination was met with resistance, calls for him to step down intensified when Ford publicly stated that he assaulted her during a high school party.

Although many people jumped to defend Kavanaugh, Whelan went way deep. Let's walk through Whelan's Twitter thread and attempt to unpack this mess.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"Dr. Ford may well have been the victim of a severe sexual assault by someone 36 years ago," Whelan writes on Twitter. "Her allegations are so vague as to such basic matters as when and where that it is impossible for Judge Kavanaugh to *prove* his innocence."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Using addresses found in a yearbook and details provided to the Washington Post, Whelan laid out four locations on Google Maps.

Then, he says he was able to locate a possible house where the alleged assault happened on Zillow, which shows the floor plan of the house.

Mashable Trend Report Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means. Sign up for Mashable’s weekly Trend Report newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

According to Whelan, Kavanaugh's classmate Chris Garrett lived in that home at the time.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Using the floor plan, Whelan reasons that Dr. Ford's account of her assault matches up with the house's layout. Then he says that because of the way the house is laid out, "someone leaving the house down the stairs and out the front door wouldn't be seen from the family room." He's casting doubt here, and suggesting it could have been anyone.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Whelan then casts more doubt by implying Chris Garrett was possibly responsible. He uses a screenshot of a sleazy Facebook interaction to prove that Garrett was friends with Mark Judge, who was allegedly in the room at the party in question.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Whelan even goes as far as to post side-by-side photos of the two men, claiming they look alike and could be easily confused. Spoiler alert: they both look like doughy bros as teenagers, and as doughy middle-aged bros now.

"Kavanaugh categorically denies being at the gathering and committing the assault," Whelan writes. "Beyond his countless character witnesses from then and now, Judge and Smyth have informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that they recall no such gathering at which Kavanaugh was present."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

But then Whelan backpedals in an effort to not get sued by Garrett for, you know, publicly accusing him of assaulting Dr. Ford:

"To be clear, I have no idea what, if anything, did or did not happen in that bedroom at the top of the stairs, and I therefore do not state, imply or insinuate that Garrett or anyone else committed the sexual assault that Ford alleges. Further, if Ford is now mistakenly remembering Garrett to be Kavanaugh, I offer no view whether that mistaken remembrance dates from the gathering or developed at some point in the intervening years."

Which is lawyer speak for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

"It is regrettable that private citizens are being drawn into this," he concludes his conspiracy thread, as if he didn't just drag a private citizen into this. "If the matter had been handled as it should have been, the Committee would have investigated the matter over the summer and resolved it privately to everyone's satisfaction without the smearing of Kavanaugh and the dragging the names of othersinto the public eye."

Ford dismissed Whelan's Twitter thread in a statement to the Washington Post:

“I knew them both, and socialized with” them, Ford said, adding that she had once visited the other classmate in the hospital. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”

His wild rollercoaster of a thread shot up to Twitter's trending list on Thursday evening and became the butt of the internet's jokes.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

But Whelan seems pretty adamant that he's cracked this case.

"Bottom line: I believe that a fair assessment of this evidence powerfully supports Judge Kavanaugh's categorical denial," he insists on Twitter.

Nobody tell him about the Denver airport, guys.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and Jeff Bridges 'come together' to promote student activism

---