Well before news of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation became public, the word circulating around Washington was that Brett Kavanaugh had some “possible problems” with women that might need to be cleaned up. Most of those rumors seemed to have something to do with Kavanaugh’s time as a clerk for Anthony Kennedy. Others concerned his actions in the clerks he hired for his own time on the federal bench.
But some of the talk pointed at the court nominee’s college career—the period of time now under scrutiny due to accusations by Deborah Ramirez. As NBC reported (and Hunter covered) on Monday, it appears that the reason those times may have been under discussion is that someone was talking about them. And that someone appears to be Kavanaugh.
In transcripts of an interview by Senate staffers over the Ramirez incident, Kavanaugh claims that it was Ramirez who was calling former classmates about the story, and that the action is suspicious.
Kavanaugh: The New York Times couldn't corroborate this story and found that she was calling around to classmates trying to see if they remembered it. And I, at least -- and I, myself, heard about that, that she was doing that. And you know, that just strikes me as, you know, what is going on here? When someone is calling around to try to refresh other people, is that what's going on? What's going on with that? That doesn't sound -- that doesn't sound good to me. It doesn't sound fair. It doesn't sound proper. It sounds like an orchestrated hit to take me out.
However, the NBC report indicates that it was Kavanaugh who had conversations with his former friends from Yale, well in advance of the Ramirez story becoming public. Texts between two of Kavanaugh’s former Yale friends—Kerry Berchem and Karen Yarasavage—indicate that Kavanaugh was talking to them about the story before it was a story. Which … doesn’t sound fair. Doesn’t sound proper. It sounds like an orchestrated hit to take out Deborah Ramirez.
The texts also indicate that Kavanaugh wasn’t just a nodding acquaintance of Ramirez, as he indicated in his testimony (“friendly, but not friends”). The pair were “more socially connected” than Kavanaugh admitted. And a wedding where the two crossed paths some ten years after graduation … may not have gone as Kavanaugh indicated.
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