Earlier today Allahpundit looked at the negotiations taking place between Christina Blasey Ford and the Judiciary Committee. The GOP agreed to push the date to Wednesday but is requiring that Ford testify first. A Politico story published today points to one additional factor which is apparently motivating Ford to push the date of the hearing back as far as possible: She plans to drive cross country to the hearing in Washington, DC.

GOP members of the Judiciary Committee held a conference call on Friday morning to discuss how to respond to the requests from Ford’s lawyers. But several elements of their offer appear to be nonstarters with Democrats and Ford’s camp, which had made clear that she could not be in the capital to testify before Thursday, according to a senior aide to the minority. “They’re making this disingenuous counteroffer knowing she won’t be here,” the Democratic aide said. The GOP has been told that Ford does not want to fly from her California home to Washington, according to the Republican senator, which means she may need to drive across the country to make the hearing. Ford has reportedly told friends she is uncomfortable in confined spaces, indicating a physical difficulty in making the trip by plane.

At first blush, this really sounds like a stunt. There are already people flying banners of support behind airplanes in northern California. Now Blasey is going to drive cross-country in what sounds an awful lot like a politician’s bus tour. No doubt we’ll be seeing excited tweets from people who encounter her at every gas stop along the way and probably a map showing her current location on CNN. But last night, CNN published a story saying Ford’s claustrophobia has been known to her friends for years though they only recently learned she blamed it on her alleged assault at age fifteen:

Two longtime friends of Ford’s told CNN this week that she has previously described feeling uncomfortable — even struggling — when she is in enclosed spaces without an “escape route” or more than one exit door, and suggested that this discomfort stemmed from the alleged encounter with Kavanaugh… Kate DeVarney, a neuroscientist who has known Ford for about 13 years, said in an interview Thursday that through their years of friendship, DeVarney knew Ford “really has a hard time being in a place where there’s no escape route.” This was the reason that Ford did not enjoy flying, DeVarney said — an airplane was “the ultimate closed space where you cannot get away.”… DeVarney said Ford also told her about how when Ford and her husband were remodeling their home, “she insisted that every room had to have an exit door to the outside.”

So DeVarney and another friend have known about her discomfort in confined spaces but Ford only connected that to the alleged assault when she told her friend about it for the first time last month.

Once again, we’re being asked to take Ford’s word that the alleged assault is the reason she feels this way. Her story could be true but how would anyone prove it? Maybe we’ll have a better idea when she gets to Washington, DC.