Paul Manafort, you may recall, worked for the Trump campaign for free. He wasn’t going poor at the time — he was getting paid by his Putin-connected foreign clients. That’s because for Manafort, Trump wasn’t the client — he was the product.

It’s the same with Facebook. The reason it’s free for you, the user, is because you are what Facebook packages and sells to its real customers.

So what are we to make of the disclosure last Thursday that Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys are working for her for no pay?

Lawyers often work pro bono for causes they believe in, and so maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe the attorneys just believe this is a big fight for defending victims of sexual assault. That’s perfectly plausible, but there’s evidence that points to a less generous interpretation of the lawyers’ actions.

We learned in Thursday’s hearing that Ford hired Debra Katz and Lisa Banks on the recommendation of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. That’s interesting.

We learned the week before that Katz and Banks were the headliners for a fundraiser for endangered Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Also interesting.

It seems Katz and Banks have a deep, long-lasting, high-dollar connection to the Democratic Party. So what, right? They can be both partisan Democrats incredibly vested in taking over the U.S. Senate and good attorneys for Ford, who after all, shares the Democrats’ goal of keeping Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court.

Sadly, though, it looks from the outside as though Katz and Banks have subordinated their client’s interests to their party’s interests.

Recall the moment during Thursday’s hearings when Ford said she would have preferred to have the Judiciary Committee send people to California to question her. Then remember her surprise when Chairman Chuck Grassley informed her that the committee had made exactly that offer.

Recall when Ford’s attorney’s rejected that offer.

Why would they turn down an offer to save their client from all this stress, anxiety, and public scrutiny? Why would they refuse Grassley’s offer to give Ford exactly the sort of venue she wanted?

We don’t know, but we can guess.

What do you think was better for Democrats’ politics here: a quiet deposition of sorts, or a huge spectacle on cable TV? The bigger the spectacle, the longer delay, the better it is for Democrats, and the worse it is for Ford.

Then throw in a couple of more details: Somebody leaked Ford’s letter to Feinstein, seemingly some time after Feinstein had deployed Katz and Banks to represent Ford. Somebody brought public an allegation Ford had said she didn’t want public.

All in all, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that Ford has lawyers who aren’t working for her, but for the Democratic Party.