Everything to know about Brett Kavanaugh
President Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. After a contentious confirmation battle including sexual assault allegations against the nominee, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the High Court.
Buried in last week’s news cycle was a revelation that NBC sat on information that would help exonerate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and further discredit one of his accusers Julie Swetnick. The revelation is also proof that the mainstream media and the left willfully engaged in an orchestrated smear campaign to try and derail Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation.
Let’s start at the beginning. Immediately after President Trump announced Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination on July 9, 2018, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was going to fight it with everything he had. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said women would die if he was confirmed. The marching orders were clear and the mainstream media, particularly female journalists, knew what they had to do.
On July 30, Christine Ford sent a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party in the 1980’s. Feinstein waited for six weeks until announcing on Sept. 13 that she had referred information about Kavanaugh to federal investigative authorities. This referral came after his confirmation hearings had ended as had the completion of his sixth background check.
Then on Sept. 16, the Washington Post’s Emma Brown ran Christine Ford’s story. The article provides no corroborating witnesses. The only “evidence” Brown sites are therapy notes from 2012 and 2013 which might not even exist. In her article, Brown claims Ford provided “portions” to her. However, under oath before Congress, Ford said she didn't know if she gave them to Brown or provided her own summary. Ford never provided the “notes” to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
NBC had no problem trafficking in uncorroborated accusations that put Kavanaugh in a bad light, but failed to report information that could help exonerate him.
Brown also ran the article despite clear contradictions in Ford’s allegations. She reported that Ford’s “therapy notes” never mentioned Kavanaugh’s name and said there were four potential offenders. Yet in Ford’s interview with Brown she said there were only two. By the time of publication, Ford had already given three different versions of when the incident happened. Ford’s July 6th text to the Washington Post said “mid 1980’s,” her letter to Feinstein said “early 1980’s,” and Brown’s Sept. 16th article stated a more narrowed-down “summer of 1982.” Brown also reported that Ford’s therapy notes say the incident happened in her “late teens,” but she was 15 in the summer of 1982.
During negotiations with the Senate Judiciary Committee over a public hearing, Ford and her high-powered Democrat attorneys, Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, made a claim that would ultimately delay the originally scheduled hearing. It was reported on Sept. 21 that Ford was afraid to fly and would have to drive across the country. We would later find out that Ford flies across country every year and has flown to Costa Rica, Hawaii, and French Polynesia in the past.
That claim bought enough time for two other allegations to surface. Despite not being able to find corroborating eyewitnesses, Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer ran a story about a woman named Deborah Ramirez in the The New Yorker on Sept. 23. Ramirez told the authors that on the night in question when she and Kavanaugh were both at Yale University, she was on the “floor, foggy and slurring her words” and it took her six days of consulting with a Democrat attorney to finally come forward.
In an attempt to corroborate Ramirez’s story, the New York Times interviewed “several dozen people” but could not find a single person with firsthand knowledge of the incident. In a Sept. 24 interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Farrow said that Ramirez came forward because “Senate Democrats began looking at this claim.” Mayer told Elle Magazine that she and Farrow aggressively pursued the story because in the #MeToo era it is important to prove a “pattern of similar behavior.”
Ford’s scared-to-fly story also bought time for Julie Swetnick and her attorney Michael Avenatti to come forward on Sept. 26. In a statement provided to Congress, Swetnick claimed that in high school she had attended at least 10 house parties with Kavanaugh where she saw him spike punch with drugs or alcohol so he and others could gang rape girls. Notably, Swetnick has previously employed the law firm of Ford’s attorney, Debra Katz, for a sexual harassment lawsuit against a former employer.
On Oct. 1, NBC ran an interview with Julie Swetnick even though they couldn't corroborate her accusations and their reporter Kate Snow said Swetnick contradicted her sworn statement. Then on Oct. 25 it was revealed that NBC had been sitting on information for weeks about a “witness” Avenatti provided to the network who instead of confirming Swetnick’s allegations, denied them. The woman also accused Avenatti of twisting her words.
The mainstream media often denies accusations that they are in bed with the Democrat Party, but this orchestrated smear of Brett Kavanaugh proves it. NBC had no problem trafficking in uncorroborated accusations that put Kavanaugh in a bad light, but failed to report information that could help exonerate him.
The next time you hear any mainstream reporter lamenting accusations of bias – remind them of this.
Get the recap of top opinion commentary and original content throughout the week.