New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly published an essay on Sunday about their upcoming book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation. That essay has sparked considerable controversy because buried deep in the essay was a mention of a third, previously unreported accusation that a classmate of now-Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s at Yale had witnessed him shoving his penis into a female classmate’s hand at a party.
We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A 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. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier; the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode.
This would certainly further establish a pattern of Kavanaugh acting grossly inappropriate toward women. That account sparked a new push to impeach Kavanaugh for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, with several 2020 candidates calling for impeachment. After all, he now has a lifetime appointment to the most powerful court in the world.
Now HuffPost is reporting that reporters Pogrebin and Kelly were on their way to interview Brett Kavanaugh for their book when he called them last-minute with a request: He would do the interview if they lied in the book and said that he had declined to be interviewed, something the reporters were not prepared to do.
Andrew Beaujon, senior editor of The Washingtonian, tweeted bits from Pogrebin and Kelly’s talk at the National Press Club, where the Kavanaugh discussions were revealed.
Needless to say, it is more than a little problematic that a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice wanted two reporters to lie about his actions as a condition of being interviewed.