The editors at the New York Times might have felt they had good reason to publish the latest hit piece on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in their opinion section as “news analysis.” The allegations against Kavanaugh, new and old, weren’t based on facts, but instead upon the “gut reaction” of the reporters who believe he is guilty.
The book that gave rise to the “news analysis,” The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, also contains the revelation that Leland Keyser, Christine Blasey Ford’s lifelong friend, did not believe Ford’s tale about Kavanaugh’s sexually assaulting her at a party in 1982.
In other words, nothing in Pogrebin and Kelly’s piece, including its reprise of debunked allegations by Kavanaugh classmate Debbie Ramirez, suggests Kavanaugh is guilty of anything.
Keyser Didn’t Believe Ford
Leland Keyser’s story is of particular interest because the reporters did not include it in their hit piece on Kavanaugh. But it is in their book.
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Before telling Keyser’s story, however, it’s worth detailing why the authors believe Ford.
Mollie Hemingway, who with Carrie Severino wrote Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court, received an advance copy of the book, and reported that the two authors believe Ford because of a “gut reaction,” evidence notwithstanding.
Why was that? Because Ford and Kavanaugh grew up near each other, the authors wrote, and Ford dated one of his friends. Keyser did too. “None of that means that Ford was, in fact, assaulted by Kavanaugh,” the authors wrote. “But it does mean that she has a baseline level of credibility as an accuser.”
“It is unclear what they mean,” Hemingway concluded. Indeed it is. As well, simply because someone lives in the same general vicinity as someone else, should she automatically be deemed a credible source against another person based upon that?
Too, Hemingway wrote, the authors reported that they gathered zero evidence that Ford lied. That somehow ignores Ford’s shifting and possibly perjurious testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, including her tall tale about fear of flying, a palpable falsehood, as The New American reported at the time. The authors “waved away” that inconvenient fact, Hemingway wrote.
But beyond that, the authors buried an unwelcome fact at the end of their book, Hemingway found. According to Ford’s tale, Keyser supposedly attended the party at which Kavanaugh assaulted her. But Keyser didn’t believe her lifelong friend. “We spoke multiple times to Keyser,” Pogrebin and Kelly wrote, “who also said that she didn’t recall that get-together or any others like it. In fact, she challenged Ford’s accuracy. ‘I don’t have any confidence in the story.’”
That’s the first time Keyser has said anything publicly, Hemingway observed, but at any rate the two writers “dismiss Keyser’s statement as the product of a bad memory, before noting that their unsuccessful efforts to corroborate Blasey Ford’s claims including desperately searching for a house that matched the description she gave.”
Another key fact: “I was told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn’t comply,” Keyser told the reporters. One suggestion was smearing Keyser as a drug addict. If Ford told the truth, why threaten Keyser? Surely another witness could corroborate the story.
Yet the two gumshoes for the Times have a “gut reaction” that Ford told the truth.
Whatever their gut feelings, the book can’t change one thing: The prosecutor who questioned Ford on behalf of the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded that Ford’s own witnesses “refuted” or “failed to corroborate” her testimony.
Another “Bombshell”
Perhaps another “gut reaction” led to the single-paragraph new allegation against Kavanaugh for which the writers provided not a shred of evidence.
As TNA reported yesterday, the new opinion piece claimed that another former classmate, 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.”
Conveniently missing from the “news analysis” were two things. First, “the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode,” meaning we have yet another Kavanaugh “victim” with no memories, Ramirez being the other. That omission required an update from the Times. The authors say that editors dropped the line.
Second, the writers didn’t report Stier’s connection to former President Bill Clinton and why it’s relevant. While Stier was defending Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment, Kavanaugh was working for independent counsel Ken Starr, whose team produced the report that led to the impeachment.
If Stier really witnessed such behavior by Kavanaugh, why didn’t he exploit it at the time?
Asked Mediaite columnist John Ziegler, “What are the chances that during the Clinton/Lewinsky saga, Steir could possibly be working against a man that he witnessed doing exactly the same thing the president he was defending was accused of by Paula Jones, and him not at least mention it to every single one of his co-workers — even if for some reason he didn’t want to leak it to the press at the time?!”
Photo of Christine Blasey-Ford: www.judiciary.senate.gov
