The headline in The New York Times was this: “Kavanaugh’s Yearbook Page Is ‘Horrible, Hurtful’ to a Woman It Named.”
Another day, another hit piece aimed at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. This one supposedly dug up a salacious, coded message, from Kavanaugh and his awful friends, implying lots of sex with an easy girl.
Except the message wasn’t salacious or about sex.
A day later, on Tuesday, we learned the identity of one source for the hit piece: a homosexual Democrat the Times hid from readers.
But he was merely one of three politically-active Democrats that readers knew nothing about.
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The Times’ Journalistic Transgressions
The hit piece was carefully crafted to damage the reputation of Kavanaugh and his friends by connecting them to the mysterious term “Renate Alumnius.”
Reported the Times, “the word ‘Renate’” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Judge Kavanaugh, who were described as the ‘Renate Alumni’: It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school.”
Renate was “part of the football players’ unsubstantiated boasting about their conquests.”
The story looked especially bad for Kavanaugh because “Renate” is Renate Schroeder Dolphin, one of the women who signed a letter backing Kavanaugh after Christine Blasey Ford accused him of rape.
Dolphin was understandably mortified and disgusted, and yet again, Kavanaugh found himself denying an outrageous claim.
Federalist: Homosexual Anti-Trump Democrat Behind Story
Problem for the Times is, stories these days are easily checked. The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway learned that carefully crafted hit piece was scrubbed of a source called “Mr. Madaleno.”
The Times, Hemingway correctly noted, uses a full name on first reference, proceeding with Mr. or Ms. plus surname thereafter. The sentence in question used “Mr.” on first reference, but was removed, according to a website that tracks surreptitious changes in the Times. Given the explosive charge, the proper correction was leaving Madaleno as the source but adding his first name. But again, the Times scrubbed the name altogether.
And who might “Mr. Madaleno” be?
“Richard S. Madaleno Jr., a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep, is a state senator in Maryland who recently lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for governor,” Hemingway reported. “He garnered headlines for a campaign ad that featured him kissing his male spouse as a rebuke of Trump. The 30-second spot has him telling viewers he seeks to ‘deliver progressive results and stand up to Donald Trump before listing things he’s done “that already infuriate” Trump.
Madaleno and a Times reporter denied his being the provenance of the story, but he did admit he spoke to the Times, the Baltimore Sun reported.
As well, the Sun reported, “The Times’ reference to a “Mr. Madaleno” appears to have been an editing error.” The reporter said “the Times interviewed Madaleno and planned to use his quote, then removed his comments as redundant. She said the Times missed the ‘stray reference’ to Madaleno when cutting the story.”
Maybe, but the question is why the Times didn’t use Madaleno’s comments given his prominence, and why did he not divulge the political affiliations of the sources it quoted on the record. For instance, another source was “a campaign surrogate for Madaleno,” Hemingway reported, another undisclosed fact. Nor did the Times divulge that another source was an editor of the yearbook in question, or that he was Facebook friends with Madaleno whose “likes” include Anti-Trump Army and Bernie Sanders.
“Devastating” Loss
Most importantly, as with the other allegations against Kavanaugh, key sources for the story, Dolphin and the men who supposedly defamed her, denied they ever had sex. Dolphin emphatically denied, as did the men in question.
“Four of the players in the ‘Renate Alumni’ photo,” the Times reported, said “that they had ‘never bragged about’ sexual contact or anything like that with Ms. Dolphin. The statement … said the yearbook’s ‘Renate’ references ‘were intended to allude to innocent dates or dance partners and were generally known within the community of people involved for over 35 years.’”
According to Hemingway, the Times truncated the first line of the statement, which began this way: “None of us has ever taken part in any kind of verbal conduct or physical actions described by the Times and never bragged about or suggested any such thing.”
As well, reported Hemingway, the Times “downplayed or ignored” friends of Kavanaugh’s who denied the story.
End result? Attempting to smear Kavanaugh again, the Times destroyed friendships of four decades. One member of the smeared group said Dolphin’s anguish is “immeasurable; the loss of her trust and respect is devastating.”
Hemingway withheld his name to stop the Times from intensifying its effort to destroy him.
Photo: photojournalis/iStock/Getty Images Plus
