Why Were Democrats So Quick to Deny Justin Fairfax Due Process?
By Virginia’s Voices
The story broke at 5 p.m. Less than two hours later State Representative Patrick Hope was quick to act. It was 6:31 p.m. on February 8, 2019 and there was no mention of an investigation, hard evidence or establish facts.

“On Monday, I will be introducing articles of impeachment for Lt. Government Justin Fairfax if he has not resigned before then,” wrote the Delegate. The message was sent an hour and a half after news broke that Fairfax had been accused by a second woman in a hectic 72 hours of sexual assault. Surely the allegations were serious and in fact they were criminal. But the seriousness and timing demanded scrutiny.
“What’s the rush… why the rush, why not let the FBI do the investigation?” asked attorney Nancy Erika Smith during a September 26, 2019 appearance on MSNBC. Smith, who brought down Fox News’ Roger Ailes, was discussing the news of a second sexual assault allegation (Deborah Ramirez) against Brett Kavanaugh. Smith was pushing hard for an investigation by the FBI regarding sexual assault allegations by Christine Blasey Ford. In Fairfax’s case, Smith had the opposite view: Fairfax should resign without investigation. Now Smith was representing Fairfax’s second accuser Meredith Watson.
At 5:03 p.m. on February 8, 2019, minutes after Smith announed that her client, Meredith Watson, made her allegation against Fairfax, former Hillary-and-Bill fundraiser and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe demanded Fairfax’s “immediate” resignation. The Democratic fundraiser is rumored to run for Governor of Virginia again in 2021. McAuliffe was the first elected official to demand Fairfax‘s “immediate resignation” less than ten minutes after the news broke. In #MeToo stories, the damage to the accused is on the front end. In a guilt-by-accusation believe-all-women twitter justice age, both Pope and McAuliffe’s decision may not have been surprising to some. But the speed? The immediacy was withering. It was guilty until proven innocent. Without even knowing who Watson and Vanessa Tyson were, let alone the basic facts of their allegations, Virginia Democrats and others in the party, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris (D-CA), were demanding that Fairfax resign.

The timing of the allegations blocked Fairfax, a former federal prosecutor, from becoming Governor of Virginia. Governor Ralph Northam was in the midst of suffering a week of scandal involving a racist photo in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. Democrats weren’t slow in asking for Northam to resign either. But the difference was that on February 1, Northam issued a press release admitting he was in the racist photo in question. That move opened the resignation floodgates. Northam would then deny he was in the photo a day later. An investigation in May by the law firm McGuire Woods declared the question inconclusive.
On February 8, after Meredith Watson, through her attorney Smith, and New Jersey PR firm Evergreen, sent a press release accusing the Lt. Governor, 40, of sexual assault twenty years ago at Duke University. It was two days after the news that Scripps College Professor Vanessa Tyson, 43, accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex in 2004 in his hotel room at the Democratic Convention in Boston when she was 28 and he was 25. Both attorneys for Tyson and Watson are connected to Democrsats and their causes, with Katz being the attorney recommended by California liberal Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to Christine Blasey Ford.
It was revealed later by Tyson during an interview with Gayle King that she had never told anyone about being sexually assaulted as an adult but was a victim of incest. A 2007 video on YouTube showed Tyson speaking about her father being a convicted pedophile. At the time of the alleged assault in 2004, Tyson worked at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and was touring New England speaking on sexual abuse survivorship as part of a speakers bureau on the subject that she founded in 2002. But Tyson confirmed she told no one about the alleged assault by Fairfax until late 2017 near the time Fairfax was finishing a winning statewide run for Lt. Governor. Tyson was also contatcing The Washington Post around the same time. In March 2018, the paper decided not to run Tyson’s story because she had no corroberation.

In the era of #MeToo where guilty-until-proven-innocent is standard there is no time for pause or investigation when a story becomes public. But the speed of Democrats to demand Fairfax resign with no talk of “waiting for more information” was noteworthy. The only two Democrats who refrained from going along with demanding Fairfax resign were Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.). All the other members of the Virginia Congressional and state delegations demanded he resign on the same day Watson surfaced — even the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus (VLBC). When VLBC posted the Fairfax resignation demand, their facebook page filled with angry responses from constituents demanding “due process” for Fairfax.

“Some Twitter users said the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus (VLBC) was too quick to urge Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax to resign,” Nigel Roberts wrote on February 10 on NewsOne.com. “A recent poll found that most Virginians are unsure what to make of the sexual assault allegations against him,” he added.
Longtime political guru Paul Goldman, who was a top advisor for the last African American statewide success story in Virginia, former Governor L. Douglas Wilder, took note.
“Are white liberal Democrats Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s biggest political obstacle to justice?” Goldman asked on his facebook?
Even Republicans noticed. Trump supporter and radio host on WJFN Richmond, John Fredericks, noted the lack of due process in the Fairfax case. During a broadcast on September 8, 2019, he called what was happening to Fairfax “a political lynching.” Another radio host, Gary Flowers on Rejoice on WREJ in Richmond, called what was happening to Fairfax “a political crucifixion.”
“If this is proven and this guy is falsely accused and everybody in his party jumped on him …everybody jumped on him with no due process, no evidence,” Fredericks added.
Fast forward eight months.
On September 12, Fairfax sued CBS for $400 million in damages for defamation. It was reported by the New York Times on February 13, that Meredith Watson accused a second man of rape, former NBA star Corey Maggette. It was also reported by Associated Press that a former boyfriend of Watson’s tried to get a restraining order against her. She was quoted in numerous text messages as saying she, “would enjoy tearing [him] down just as much as you enjoyed tearing [her] down,” regarding her ex.
Even more shocking, Fairfax’s attorney Barry Pollack sent a letter to Durham North Carolina prosecutor Satana DeBerry onJuly 9 revealing that a third “exonerating witness” was present in the room with Fairfax and Watson during the 2000 encounter at Duke who could exonerate Fairfax. Since the July letter to prosecutors, both Watson and her attorney Nancy Erika Smith, have been silent.

To date, the Democratic Party of Virginia hasn’t called for an investigation into the Fairfax matter. Since then, Fairfax has been ostracised by the party while asking for a criminal investigation on himself. Perhaps it’s because started his political career running without permission from the party. Perhaps it’s because his rivals run the Virginia Democratic Party. Whatever the reason, liberal Democrats have led the charge against him.
