Fox News’ Laura Ingraham cast doubt on an unverified allegation of sexual misconduct against Sen. Cory Booker, claiming she believed the accusation is a “smear” against the New Jersey Democrat.
Booker was accused of assaulting a gay man in a restroom in 2014, according to an unsigned letter posted on Twitter this weekend.
Ingraham said on her Fox News program Monday evening, “if you’re going to make an allegation like this, you have to put your name to it.”
“We don’t raise this issue because we automatically assume it has credibility,” Ingraham said. “I don’t like anonymous allegations. We actually think everyone should wait for the details to come in before we say something like this, right?”
Ingraham addressed the sexual misconduct allegations made against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. During his confirmation process, he was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. Booker was an outspoken defender of the women who had accused Kavanaugh of misconduct.
“I don’t like it when people do this kind of stuff,” Ingraham said of the anonymous accusation against Booker. “I believe it is a smear. I mean, if you’re going to make an accusation — this is a supposedly a man making an accusation that something happened in a bathroom — if you’re going to make that kind of accusation you better put your name to it.”
“Our point is a simple one. We have major media outlets during Kavanaugh rolling with this anonymous stuff, and you had people like Cory Booker out there tarring Brett Kavanaugh because of the ‘mountain of evidence,’ which ended up being nothing.”
A spokesperson for Booker did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate earlier this month, following an FBI investigation into the allegations of misconduct.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to remove the letter because it contained unverified information.
