A much-discussed article by New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, authors of the new book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, revives the story of Deborah Ramirez, the woman who, during last year’s Supreme Court nomination fight, said that a drunken Kavanaugh thrust his penis at her (she was also drunk) at a party at Yale during the 1983-1984 school year.
Pogrebin and Kelly claim that extensive evidence supports the Ramirez allegation. “At least seven people, including Ms. Ramirez’s mother, heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge,” they write in the article. “Two of those people were classmates who learned of it just days after the party occurred, suggesting that it was discussed among students at the time.”
The article did not, however, discuss what any of those seven people actually said about the alleged incident. Nevertheless, partisans quickly seized on it to support their position on Kavanaugh. There was “substantial corroboration” for Ramirez’s story, tweeted Susan Hennessey, editor of the influential blog Lawfare. For their part, some Democratic presidential candidates — Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg — cited the story as (additional) cause for Kavanaugh to be impeached.
Still, what did those seven people say? Pogrebin and Kelly had the opportunity to describe that at length in their new book. But a look at the book, which will be officially released tomorrow, shows the authors do not offer much there either. The role the seven people played in the Ramirez matter is discussed mostly in two places, pages 64-67 and pages 262-263. Here is a look at who they are and what they said, as described by Pogrebin and Kelly:
1.) Ramirez’s mother. Pogrebin and Kelly report that Ramirez “does not remember telling anyone about [the alleged incident] at the time.” Later, though, while Ramirez was still in college — meaning in the following two or three years — Ramirez had a talk with her mother, Mary Ann LeBlanc. According to the book, they were in a restaurant, and Ramirez began crying. “[She] confessed through tears, ‘Something happened at Yale,'” the book reports.
Something happened at Yale. According to Pogrebin and Kelly, that was all Ramirez told her mother at the time, and it was all Ramirez told her mother about the alleged incident for the next 35 years, until Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court.
The reason, the authors explain, was that the subject was just too emotionally wrenching for Ramirez to recount, even to her mother. “It was extremely painful,” LeBlanc told the authors. “I thought she was raped; that’s how hysterical she was. She did not want to talk about that. It was like a dead subject — don’t go there, because it hurt so much.” Nevertheless, the entirety of Ramirez’s semi-contemporaneous revelation to her mother was: Something happened at Yale.
2.) Kenneth Appold. A suitemate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale who is now the James Hastings Nichols Professor of Reformation History at Princeton Theological Seminary, Appold was an original source for the New Yorker story that first reported the Ramirez allegation. Appold spoke anonymously for that piece, but later, in October 2018, allowed his name to be used in a New Yorker update because he hoped to force an FBI investigation of Kavanaugh. The New Yorker said Appold “first heard about the alleged incident … either the night it occurred or a day or two later.” Appold said an eyewitness told him the story and that he believes it is true because what he heard matches Ramirez’s account even though Appold has never spoken to her.
Appold told Pogrebin and Kelly a bit more. “Within a couple of days of the party, Ken Appold stood in a Lawrence Hall entryway and was told by two Stiles freshmen (whose identity he can’t recall) what Kavanaugh had done to Ramirez,” the authors write. (Stiles is a Yale living area.) “‘It was fresh in their recollections,’ Appold said. ‘One person saw it; the second person was hearing the story from him for the second time.'”
Appold told the New Yorker that when Kavanaugh was nominated, he, Appold, tried to get in touch with the person who actually witnessed the alleged event but got no response. The magazine reported that it was able to reach the classmate, “but he said that he had no memory of the incident.”
Still, Appold said the Ramirez matter was “not the kind of thing you forget.” And, for Pogrebin and Kelly, he added a damning new twist: “Appold said he was told an additional detail, however, that Ramirez does not remember,” the authors write, “that after she pushed the penis away, Kavanaugh went with Genda into the bathroom, became erect, came back out, and tried it again.” (Kevin Genda was a classmate of both Kavanaugh and Ramirez.)
“That was the story as I heard it,” Appold told Pogrebin and Kelly. Whether Appold told that to the New Yorker is not clear, but in any event, the New Yorker did not publish it, although it certainly would have been big news in the context of the nomination battle.
3.) Michael Wetstone. A Kavanaugh classmate, the authors note that Wetstone “confirmed to the New Yorker that he remembered Appold telling him about the same incident in graduate school.” It is not clear whether Pogrebin and Kelly spoke to Wetstone or just used the New Yorker’s work. But the New Yorker’s description of Wetstone’s story was not particularly strong; Wetstone learned about the alleged incident from Appold, who was his graduate school roommate and who told the New Yorker he informed Wetstone about it in 1989 or 1990.
4.) Richard Oh. Another Kavanaugh classmate, the authors say Oh “overheard a female student emotionally describing making contact with a fake penis, saying ‘It’s not real,’ and then realizing it was real.” The book contains no word on who that student might have been. (It also says Ramirez “does not remember telling anyone about [the alleged incident] at the time.”) Oh, who gave an affidavit to Ramirez’s legal team, told the authors that, whoever the emotional female student was, his memory matches that of Ramirez, even though he does not know her.
5.) Anonymous. Pogrebin and Kelly report that “an unidentified friend of Ramirez’s … said in a recent affidavit that she heard about the incident in the 1990s.” The book offers no other information about the unidentified friend or her recollection.
6. & 7.) Chad Ludington and James Roche. Pogrebin and Kelly write that “two other people from Kavanaugh and Ramirez’s Yale class, Chad Ludington and James Roche, vaguely remember hearing about something happening to Ramirez during freshman year.”
That is the seven. Number 1, Ramirez’s mother, based her account on four very unspecific words from her daughter 35 years ago. Number 2, Appold, based his account on a memory of being told something by a “witness” who could not recall the incident at all. Number 3, Wetstone, heard it from Appold. Number 4, Oh, overheard something from someone he doesn’t remember that did not connect the incident to Kavanaugh. Number 5, Anonymous, is totally unclear. And Number 6 and Number 7, Ludington and Roche, had “vague” memories that also did not connect an unspecified incident to Kavanaugh.
That is enough for Pogrebin and Kelly, who conclude, “The claims of Deborah Ramirez, while not proven by witnesses, also ring true.” Perhaps that will convince some readers. For others: When anti-Kavanaugh partisans cite “substantial corroboration” for Ramirez’s allegation, it’s good to keep in mind who really said what.
