NYT issues correction after bombshell Kavanaugh report: ‘Friends say she does not recall the episode’

The New York Times issued a “correction” on a bombshell story Sunday that attempted to smear Brett Kavanaugh — but it turned out to be more than just a little tweak.

According to Fox News, the Times admitted Sunday night, hours after publishing a new allegation of sexual misconduct against the Supreme Court justice, that the woman alleged to have been assaulted “declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode.”

The editor’s note, which came only after the Times’ story spurred calls from Democrats to impeach Kavanaugh, read:

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 “bombshell” allegation

The new allegation was published in an article titled, “Brett Kavanaugh Fit in with the Privileged Kids. She Did Not,” by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, who adapted the article from their upcoming book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation. The article revisits an allegation first reported by The New Yorker last September against Kavanaugh from former Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a drunken dorm party when they were undergraduates.

The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow was criticized at the time for publishing the report despite major problems, including that it was not corroborated, either by The New Yorker or the Times, which failed to confirm it after contacting dozens of people who knew Ramirez.

Significantly, Sunday’s article does not mention that Ramirez, as the Times reported last year, “could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself” to her and only identified Kavanaugh as the culprit after “six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney.”

The missing piece

The Times‘ latest story seeks to back up Ramirez’s claim with a new — and, it turns out, also unverified — allegation. A former classmate of Kavanaugh’s, Max Stier, said that he once “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 article mentions that Stier contacted senators and the FBI about the incident, but the FBI “did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly.” The authors add that they “corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.”

But those who bothered to sift through the authors’ book noticed something important: neither the anonymous woman nor her friends recall the incident. The Times later issued a correction that tried to downplay the significance of what was left out, calling it “one element” of the story, rather than, you know, the story.

This line now appears in the article: “The female student declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode.” But as Fox reports, the article pointedly fails to mention that Stier, the sole identified witness of the incident, was Bill Clinton’s defense lawyer against allegations of sexual misconduct, and it leaves out that he battled Kavanaugh during the Whitewater scandal when Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr.

A “correction,” or an admission of dishonesty?

Remarkably, the Times‘ correction is not the result of new information, but information in the book written by the authors of the article. The Times appears to have deliberately published a story based on cherry-picked information that was already available to the authors. They only issued their “correction” after they were caught lying.

But it was never about the truth, was it? Like the Kavanaugh stories last year, the Times’ new allegation follows a now-familiar Fake News formula: publish a defamatory story about a conservative first, then issue a “correction” that undercuts the entire story, only after the damage has been done. Once again, the media published a hit piece against Kavanaugh, this time with the ostensible aim of spurring an impeachment push against the judge.

The Democrats responded with the expected, choreographed outrage. Several Democrats running for president, including Sens. Kamala Harris (CA), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Cory Booker (NJ); former Texas lawmaker Beto O’Rourke; and former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro demanded on Sunday that Kavanaugh step down. Harris wrote of the Supreme Court justice:

I sat through those hearings. 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.

The Times latest drive-by recalls the dark chapter in American history almost one year ago, when once-prestigious news outlets breathlessly printed uncorroborated stories against Kavanaugh to railroad his nomination and destroy his life. In addition to the primary allegation from Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh was infamously accused of “gang rape” and other outlandish crimes, as reporters at well-respected newspapers set about investigating his drinking habits and other marginalia from his high school and undergraduate years.

The Kavanaugh moment was a wake-up call for many conservatives, and it looks like those who “woke up” were on the right track. A year later, the media hasn’t changed a jot. For Democrats on the hunt for conservative scalps, facts are always secondary to the agenda.