Like the president, the right was initially hesitant to challenge Ford, who was largely seen as a credible witness when she took the stand last Thursday. But nearly a week after her testimony, Kavanaugh’s broad base of support within the Republican Party was ready to take the fight to her (second) door. A report published Tuesday by RealClearInvestigations questioned Ford’s claim that she first brought up the Kavanaugh incident in couples therapy with her husband in 2012, over an argument about installing a second entryway to her house. According to RealClear’s Paul Sperry, building permits showed the door was installed in 2008, but was part of a renovation to add an additional room to the house—not to provide Ford a therapeutic escape route, as she suggested during her Senate testimony. “The door was not an escape route but an entrance route,” an attorney familiar with the investigation told Sperry. “It appears the real plan for the second front door was to rent out a separate room.” Other “new right” figures drew tenuous links between Ford and Peter Strzok, the F.B.I. agent pulled from the Russia probe for his anti-Trump text messages, and one woman claimed that Ford’s participation in a study about hypnosis proved she had somehow altered her own memories—her tweet was re-tweeted more than 7,000 times.

On Tuesday night, the conspiracy-mongering entered the mainstream in the form of a letter from an anonymous ex-boyfriend of Ford’s to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley. In the letter, obtained by Fox News, the ex claimed that during their six-year relationship, he witnessed Ford help a friend prepare for a polygraph test. Assisted by her “background in psychology,” Ford allegedly “explained in detail what to expect, how polygraphs worked, and helped [her friend] become familiar and less nervous about the exam.” The letter goes on to claim that over the course of their relationship, Ford had repeatedly flown back and forth from Hawaii, and never indicated a fear of flying, “closed quarters, tight spaces, or places with only one exit.” Furthermore, she allegedly never mentioned “anything regarding her experience as a victim of sexual assault, harassment, or misconduct, [or] Brett Kavanaugh.” In his own letter, Grassley wrote that the ex-boyfriend’s account “raises specific concerns about the reliability of [Ford’s] polygraph examination results,” and conflicts with Ford’s sworn testimony that she had never helped anyone prepare for a polygraph.

Even as the right flexes, on Wednesday morning Trump’s minders at Fox & Friends seemed to be attempting to get him back on track. Yes, they acknowledged, there are “holes” in Ford’s story, but for the most part, it’s preferable that Trump not be the one to highlight this. “The tactic of the president laying low has been lauded by all sides. Last night he chose to blow it as the F.B.I. is handing in the report as early as today,” said Brian Kilmeade. “As much as the crowd loved it, I wonder about the wisdom tactically of him doing that.”