The New York Times wants to relitigate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s spot on the bench, and it’s willing to sacrifice its credibility to do so.
The paper dropped a report over the weekend detailing what actually aren’t new accusations against Kavanaugh, although the fact that it bills them as “new” might be the least misleading thing about the report.
The reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, went back over Deborah Ramirez’s supposed encounter with Kavanaugh in a new book. Ramirez, recall, accused the then-Yale freshman of sticking his penis in her face, forcing her to “swat it away and inadvertently touch it.” But no one present when this supposedly happened remembered it occurring. Also, recall that during the Kavanaugh hearings, Ramirez attempted to coach people to remember her version of events so that they would back up her story.
The story of the other accuser — an unidentified woman neither remembers the incident nor came forward with the accusation herself — was brought forward by another classmate, Max Stier. This allegation was reportedly shopped to Senate Democrats during Kavanaugh’s confirmation, but they didn’t find it credible enough to act on it, as the Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino notes. And the Washington Post apparently had the story a year ago but refused to print it because it couldn’t confirm anything.
Essentially, two old accusations lacking credibility have been conveniently repackaged to sell books. They are not the bombshell the Times wants them to be. As before, neither has been credibly corroborated and therefore neither is believable.
The whole piece is thoroughly dishonest and irresponsible, especially given that the Times conveniently left out two important details in its report. First, Stier, the Yale classmate who allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh’s encounter with the second unidentified woman, is a longtime Democratic consultant who worked on Bill Clinton’s defense team during the federal investigation into his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But the Times reporters chose to describe Stier as the head of a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., and a “respected thought leader,” which, for all we know, he could be. But the fact that they felt a need to hide his actual significance as a political operative shows you that they knew they were hiding something. It’s evidence, as they say in the law, of mens rea.
More important, the Times failed to mention that the very allegation it detailed has been denied by the Yale woman whom Kavanaugh allegedly victimized. That’s right: The girl Stier claimed was sexually harassed doesn’t remember the incident at all and has consistently denied that it even happened, according to her friends. In their book, Pogrebin and Kelly “quietly” mention this, according to Mollie Hemingway, who obtained a copy before it releases on Tuesday. But the Times story neglected it completely. Only after Hemingway and others shamed them on Twitter all day Sunday did the Times‘ editors finally get around to adding an editor’s note explaining this key fact, which pretty much undermines the rest of the story.
“An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hands of a female student at a drunken dorm party,” the correction reads. “The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.” (Emphasis added.)
So why didn’t the Times include this information from the get-go? Because it would have made the story too dull to print — a mere re-hash of what was known already. Again, this seems like evidence of mens rea. This whole thing was apparently just an attempt to sell some books and perhaps revive a long-debunked narrative ahead of an election year.
The New York Times, and everyone else who jumped on the anti-Kavanaugh train without waiting for corroboration, wants to be right. They want the last word; the I told you so; the ability to point the finger at those who defended Kavanaugh and say, Look what you did. But this would require them to withhold context, print baseless accusations, and abandon integrity.
Naturally, they jumped at the opportunity.
