The New York Times suddenly made a major revision
to a supposed bombshell piece late Sunday concerning a
resurfaced allegation of sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett
Kavanaugh — hours after virtually all 2020 Democratic presidential
candidates had cited the original article as a reason to impeach Kavanaugh.
The update included the significant detail that several
friends of the alleged victim said she did not recall the purported
sexual assault in question at all. The Times also stated for the
first time that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed, and has
made no comment about the episode.
The only firsthand statement concerning the supposed
attack in the original piece, which was published on Saturday, came
from a Clinton-connected lawyer who claimed to have witnessed
it.
The Times' revision says: "Editors' Note: 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 hand of a female
student at a drunken dorm party. 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."
The update came only after The Federalist's Mollie
Hemingway, who reviewed an advance copy of the book, first flagged the article's omission on Twitter — prompting
other commentators to press the issue.
The Times did not immediately respond to an email from
Fox News seeking comment.
"Should I be surprised at this point
that the NYT would make such an unforgivable oversight?"
— Mark Hemingway
"Should I be surprised at this point that the NYT
would make such an unforgivable oversight?" asked RealClearInvestigations' Mark
Hemingway.
Wrote the Washington Examiner's Jerry Dunleavy:
"Crazy how the 'one element' that wasn’t included in the original article
was the part where the alleged victim’s friends said she doesn’t remember it
happening."
This
undated photo shows Deborah Ramirez. Her uncorroborated allegations that
Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her in college – which came after she
admitted to classmates that she was unsure Kavanaugh was the culprit, and after
she spent several days talking to a lawyer – were reported Sept. 23, 2018,
by The New Yorker magazine. (Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence via
AP)
"It’s important to point out that this
correction almost certainly would have never occurred if conservative media
folks like @MZHemingway and
others hadn’t obtained the copy of the actual book
itself the same day the excerpt/article was released," author James Hasson
said.
Throughout the day on Sunday, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth
Warren, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker and Julian Castro, among others, declared that Kavanaugh
"must be impeached," citing the allegation.
The revitalized, longshot push to get Kavanaugh removed
from the high court came as Democrats' apparent effort to impeach President Trump has largely stalled. Trump, for his part, suggested Sunday that Kavanaugh should sue for
defamation.
The Times piece by Robin Pogrebin and Kate
Kelly, adapted from their forthcoming book, asserted that a
Kavanaugh classmate, Clinton-connected nonprofit CEO Max Stier, "saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a
different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a
female student."
The Times did not mention Stier's work as a Clinton defense attorney, or
Stier's legal battles with Kavanaugh during the Whitewater
investigation, and simply called him a "respected thought leader."
According to the Times, Stier "notified senators and
the FBI about this account" last year during the Kavanaugh
hearings, "but the FBI did not investigate and Mr. Stier has
declined to discuss it publicly."
However, the Times' article also conspicuously did not
mention that Pogrebin and Kelly's book found that the female student in
question had denied any knowledge of the alleged episode.
"The book notes, quietly, that the woman Max Stier
named as having been supposedly victimized by Kavanaugh and friends denies any
memory of the alleged event," observed Mollie Hemingway. "Seems,
I don’t know, significant."
The book reads: "[Tracy] Harmon, whose surname is now
Harmon Joyce, has also refused to discuss the incident, though several of her
friends said she does not recall it."
"Omitting these facts from the @nytimes story is one of worst
cases of journalistic malpractice that I can recall,"
wrote the National Review's Washington correspondent, John McCormack, on
Twitter.
McCormack wrote separately: "If Kavanaugh’s 'friends pushed his
penis,' then isn’t it an allegation of wrongdoing against Kavanaugh’s
'friends,' not Kavanaugh himself? Surely even a modern liberal Yalie who’s
been to one of those weird non-sexual 'naked parties' would recognize both
the female student and Kavanaugh are both alleged victims in this alleged
incident, barring an additional allegation that a college-aged Kavanaugh asked
his 'friends' to 'push his penis.'"
The Times went on to note in the article that it had
"corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr.
Stier," but the article apparently meant only that the Times had
corroborated that Stier made his claim to the FBI. No first-hand corroboration
of the alleged episode was apparently obtained.
Nevertheless, Democrats announced a new effort to topple
Kavanaugh. Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono -- who infamously said last
year that Kavanaugh did not deserve a fair hearing because he might be pro-life --
said the Senate Judiciary Committee should begin an impeachment inquiry to
determine whether Kavanaugh lied to Congress.
Impeaching Kavanaugh would require a majority vote in the
Democratic-controlled House, and a highly unlikely two-thirds vote in the
GOP-majority Senate would then be needed to remove him from the bench. No
Supreme Court justice or president has ever been convicted by the Senate,
although eight lower-level federal judges have been.
The long odds didn't stop 2020 Democratic presidential
hopefuls from joining in on the effort.
"I sat through those hearings," Harris wrote on
Twitter. "Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to
the American people. He was put on the Court through a sham process and his
place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice. He must be
impeached."
During the hearings, Harris strongly implied that she knew Kavanaugh had
improperly discussed Special Counsel Robert Mueller's then-ongoing probe with a
Trump-connected lawyer.
Harris provided no evidence for the bombshell
insinuation, which went viral on social media and sent the hearing room into stunned silence, even as
she directly accused Kavanaugh of lying under oath.
Castro and Warren echoed that sentiment and
said Kavanaugh had committed perjury.
"It’s more clear than ever that Brett Kavanaugh lied
under oath," Castro wrote. "He should be impeached. And Congress
should review the failure of the Department of Justice to properly investigate
the matter."
Warren wrote: "Last
year the Kavanaugh nomination was rammed through the Senate without a thorough
examination of the allegations against him. Confirmation is not exoneration,
and these newest revelations are disturbing. Like the man who appointed him,
Kavanaugh should be impeached."
O'Rourke claimed to "know" that
Kavanaugh had lied under oath, and falsely said that the new accuser was not
known to Senate Democrats or the FBI last year.
"Yesterday, we learned of another accusation against
Brett Kavanaugh—one we didn't find out about before he was confirmed because
the Senate forced the F.B.I. to rush its investigation to save his
nomination," O'Rourke said. "We know he lied under oath. He should be
impeached."
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tweeted in
part, "This new allegation and additional corroborating evidence adds to a
long list of reasons why Brett Kavanaugh should not be a Supreme Court justice.
I stand with survivors and countless other Americans in calling for impeachment
proceedings to begin."
Amy Klobuchar stopped short of calling for
impeachment, and instead posted a picture of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey
Ford with the words, "Let us never forget what courage looks like."
Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, said he backed getting rid of
Kavanaugh by any legal means available: "The revelations today confirm
what we already knew: During his hearing, Kavanaugh faced credible accusations
and likely lied to Congress. I support any appropriate constitutional mechanism
to hold him accountable."
As the calls mounted, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky., shot back Sunday afternoon on Twitter -- and made clear that Kavanaugh wasn't going
anywhere.
"The far left’s willingness to seize on
completely uncorroborated and unsubstantiated allegations during last year’s
confirmation process was a dark and embarrassing chapter for the Senate,"
McConnell wrote.
He added: "Fortunately a majority of Senators and
the American people rallied behind timeless principles such as due process and
the presumption of innocence. I look forward to many years of service to come
from Justice Kavanaugh."
The Times' piece also stated that well before Kavanaugh
became a federal judge, "at least seven people" had heard about how
he allegedly exposed himself to Deborah Ramirez at a party.
Ramirez had called classmates at Yale seeking
corroboration for her story, and even told some of her classmates that she
could not remember the culprit in the alleged episode -- before changing
her mind and publicly blaming Kavanaugh "after six days of carefully
assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney," the New Yorker reported last year in a widely derided piece.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, then led by Chuck
Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in an executive summary of its investigation that it
contacted Ramirez’s counsel "seven times seeking evidence to
support claims made in the New Yorker," but that "Ms. Ramirez
produced nothing in response and refused a Committee request for an
interview."
Late Sunday, Grassley's office called out the Times
for omitting key details in the story published this weekend.
"@NYTimes did
not contact Sen. Grassley’s office for this story. If they had, we
would've reminded them of a few key public facts they omitted," Grassley's
team wrote. "Despite 7 attempts by staff, Ms. Ramirez' lawyers declined
to provide documentary evidence referenced in the article/witness accounts to
support the claims. They also declined invitations for Ms. Ramirez to speak
with committee investigators or to provide a written statement."
Additionally, the FBI separately reached out to nearly a
dozen individuals to corroborate the allegations by Ford and Ramirez, and
ultimately spoke to ten individuals and two eyewitnesses, but apparently found
no corroboration.
The agency's investigation began after then-Sen.
Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., called for a one-week delay in Kavanaugh's
confirmation hearings so an independent agency could look into the claims
against him. Flake said the FBI's probe needed to be limited in length to avoid derailing the
proceedings with endless claims and probes going back to Kavanaugh's high
school years.
Kavanaugh, predicted by Democrats during his confirmation
process to be a hardline conservative, often sided with liberal justices during
the Supreme Court's last term.
One of those referrals was for now-disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti and one of his
clients, Julie Swetnick, regarding a potential "conspiracy" to
provide false statements to Congress and obstruct its investigation. Swetnick's credibility took a hit as she changed her
story about Kavanaugh's purported gang-rape trains, and her ex-boyfriend went
public to say she was known for "exaggerating everything."
Swetnick and Ramirez were just two of several women who
had accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct during his confirmation process.
Christine Blasey Ford notably testified that Kavanaugh attempted to
sexually assault her at a party when they were teens, and dubiously asserted that the memory was
"indelible" in her "hippocampus" -- although no
witnesses could corroborate her ever-changing story -- even her close lifelong friend, Leland Keyser, who Ford
said had attended the party.
Keyser, according to the Times reporters' new
book, did not believe Ford's story -- and refused to change
her mind, despite pressure from progressive activists and Ford's friends.
"It just didn't make any sense," Keyser said, referring
to Ford's explanation of how she was assaulted at a party that Keyser attended,
but could not recall how she got home.
Ford's attorney, Debra
Katz, was quoted in a new book as saying that Ford was motivated to come
forward in part by a desire to tag Kavanaugh's reputation with an
"asterisk" before he could start ruling on abortion-related cases.
"It is important that we know, and that is part of
what motivated Christine."
The Federalist reported last week that Ford's father privately supported Kavanaugh's confirmation, and
approached Ed Kavanaugh on a golf course to make his support clear.
Some claims that surfaced during Kavanaugh's confirmation
fell apart within days. For example, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.,
received a call from an anonymous constituent who claimed that in 1985, two
"heavily inebriated men" referred to as "Brett and Mark"
had sexually assaulted a friend of hers on a boat.
The Twitter account belonging to the accuser
apparently advocated for a military coup against the Trump
administration. The constituent recanted the sexual assault
claim on the social media site days later.
Fox News' Andrew Craft in Plano, Texas, Chad
Pergram, and Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
Gregg
Re is a lawyer and editor based in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @gregg_re.
