Rachel Mitchell

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (Sept 2018) took a leave of absence from Maricopa County Attorney's Office to serve as Investigative Counsel for Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She participated in the September 27, 2018 hearings of Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh, concerning Ford's allegations of sexual assault towards Kavanaugh. Mitchell was brought in by the Republican senators in the committee, and questioned Ford and Kavanaugh. The committee's Democratic senators questioned Ford and Kavanaugh themselves. During the coverage of the hearing, CBS News described Mitchell as "a career prosecutor with decades of experience prosecuting sex crimes". Following the hearing, she issued a memorandum concluding a reasonable prosecutor would not file charges based on the evidence before the committee. The memo was criticized for drawing conclusions based on too little evidence.