Question about instances where someone accuses a high-profile person of a long ago sexual assault:

[Tommy_Carcetti]

10. Again, I'm not casting any aspersions on your own personal standards. But...

...what we are talking about goes far beyond just you and into human nature in general.

People tell the truth. They also lie. Perhaps like you, I'm also the eternal optimist and want to believe that people are generally telling the truth about things. Or if they are lying, it usually is only about innocent or non-consequential things.

But they do still lie. And it's not always innocent lying either.

And that's where creating legal repercussions for lying in formal situations does make a difference in how people act.

Let's consider the act of perjury for a minute. I would venture to say the vast majority of perjury situations involve what is called "defensive lying." That is, they lie at risk of perjury because they are afraid that if they are truthful, what would be revealed would be much more harmful to them than the risk of being caught lying. In other words, they lie to protect themselves and their reputations or their legal well-being.

What is far, far more rare in perjury situations is "offensive lying." That is, they are not lying simply to protect themselves, but rather to maliciously hurt someone else.

And a lie to the effect of falsely accusing someone of sexual misconduct is one of the most egregious lies there is. (In the world of civil litigation, it's commonly referred to as "defamation per se." )

So in a situation where someone seeks to maliciously engage in offensive lying, if it is outside the scope of sworn testimony, they might feel more emboldened to do so. After all, they wouldn't be putting their liberty at risk; at worst they might be subjected to some civil litigation for defamation, but if the subject being defamed is a public figure, the standard of proof for liability is extremely high.

But if they are in an environment where they are being subjected to the laws of perjury, there's huge risk and little upside to engaging in offensive lying. Unlike defensive lying under oath, which is a weighing of risks and rewards and simply hoping that they a) won't get caught in a lie and b) their lie is believed, thus absolving them of whatever they are hiding, offensive lying you would have to be so blinded by vindictiveness against another person to put aside the legal risks they are engaging in.

So let's bring it back to the story at hand.

Right now, Tara Reade and Juanita Broaddrick have both accused two prominent political figures--Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, respectively--of sexual assault decades ago, where there is neither physical evidence nor eyewitness testimony to support those claims. If they are in fact not being truthful about those claims, there is still little risk to engaging in their lies. The mere publicity their stories receive serve to damage the reputation of the people they would be maligning, and its unlikely given the legal standard that Biden or Clinton would want to spend years tied in court on a defamation claim that might be hard to prove.

But for Christine Blasey-Ford (who otherwise would be in the same situation as Reade and Broaddrick) to be lying, it would be much different. Once she raised her hand in front of the Senate, she was locked into the threat of legal prosecution if she was not telling the truth. She would have to have some sort of overwhelming reason to attack Brett Kavanaugh's reputation to the point where it overrode her fears of prosecution for perjury. Personally from her testimony I didn't see any real reason or motive for her to defame Kavanaugh emerge. So at the very least, there was a sense of sincerity of her belief in her testimony, that at the very least, she believed she was telling the truth.

So it's not just about having a personal belief that most people are telling you the truth unless you have cause to think otherwise. Legal penalties are indeed a game changer in these situations, and if one acts to avoid a situation that would subject them to these legal penalties, it is valid cause to question their credibility.