XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.usa

New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly are out with a
new book that attempts to buttress the unsubstantiated claims deployed
last year against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation” is neither a look
at the education of Brett Kavanaugh nor an investigation. They admit
they found no evidence to support the claims made by Christine Blasey
Ford or Debbie Ramirez, although they say their “gut reaction” to the allegations is that they are true. They generously concede that their
“gut” tells them that Michael Avennati client Julie Swetnick’s claims
are not true, citing the lack of corroboration.

The “lack of corroboration” standard was unevenly held to by the
authors. Blasey Ford’s four witnesses all denied knowledge of the party
at which her alleged assault took place. Ramirez went from telling
Ronan Farrow “I don’t have any stories about Brett Kavanaugh and sexual misconduct,” to telling friends of an incident for which she “couldn’t
be sure” Kavanaugh was involved, to now being the centerpiece of the
Pogebrin and Kelly book. Ramirez also had no eyewitness support for her
story that allegedly took place at a well-attended party, even after
friendly media outlets contacted some 75 classmates trying to find corroboration. Both women had the support of many friends and
activists, however.

The only supposedly new claim made in the book isn’t new and comes from Democrat attorney Max Stier, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s with whom
he has a long and contentious history. In the words of the Yale Daily
News, they were “pitted” against each other during the Whitewater
investigation in the 1990s when Kavanaugh worked for Independent
Counsel Ken Starr. Stier defended President Bill Clinton, whose legal
troubles began when a woman accused him of exposing himself to her in
hotel room she had been brought to. Clinton later settled with the
woman for $850,000 and, due to a contempt of court citation for
misleading testimony, ended up losing his law license for five years.
Stier worked closely with David Kendall, who went on to defend Hillary
Clinton against allegations of illegally handling classified
information. Kavanaugh’s reference to his opponents being motivated by
“revenge on behalf of the Clintons” met with befuddlement by liberal
media, despite the surprisingly large number of Clinton-affiliated
attorneys who kept popping up during his confirmation hearings.

In any case, Stier’s claim, which even two Democratic senators’ offices
didn’t find particularly worthwhile, was that he had seen an inebriated Kavanaugh, pants-down, at a freshman-year party. Stier’s claim to the
staffers, we’re told, was that other people at the party put
Kavanaugh’s genitalia into the hands of a classmate. Another unnamed
person alleged said that he or she might have remembered hearing that
the female student had transferred out of her college because of
Kavanaugh, “though exactly why was unclear.”

The reporters, who describe Democrats in glowing terms and Republicans otherwise, say that Stier is a “respected thought leader” in the
defense of the federal bureaucracy. They don’t mention his history of
working for the Clintons. As for the victim? They say she “has refused
to discuss the incident, though several of her friends said she does
not recall it.”

To repeat: Several of her friends said she does not recall it.

So to summarize, the only new claim in the new book is that a
Democratic attorney told two senators that he saw an incident where a
third party allegedly did something to Kavanaugh and the young woman.
In their book, the authors are upset that this claim didn’t lead to a
massive FBI investigation, although they don’t explain why they think
it should have.

Pogebrin and Kelly left the victim’s denial out of their New York Times
story. It is unclear why the reporters and editors allowed the story to
be published without this salient fact that they conceded, albeit
briefly, in their own book.

--
Watching Democrats come up with schemes to "catch Trump" is like
watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Road Runner.

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