Lo and behold, just as Christine Blasey Ford was set to testify against President Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, another “victim” has been dredged out of the ether, and is claiming Kavanaugh harassed her in college.
Gee, it’s almost like Democrats have a plethora of alleged victims just waiting in the wings, ready to strike when the time is right.
Ford’s story of being harassed by Kavanaugh in high school is already standing on flimsy grounds. She’s done everything in her power to delay the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into her claims. And, despite repeated attempts to get her to testify, she’s been recalcitrant, making up excuse after excuse about why she can’t come to Washington to tell her story. (RELATED: Christine Blasey Ford Indicates She Doesn’t Want to Fly to Testify.)
Bad as Ford’s story is, the new accuser shouldn’t merit half the attention she’s being given by the national media. Last night in the digital pages of The New Yorker, Deborah Ramirez made her allegations known to Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer. Ramirez alleges that while both her and Kavanaugh were students at Yale, they had a dormitory party where Kavanaugh essentially exposed himself to her.
From The New Yorker report (warning: explicit language is involved):
After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.
There are plenty of holes in this story. First of all, in the story itself, it’s stated that “there are significant gaps in her memories of the evening.” Also, when she was first contacted by The New Yorker, “she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty.”
It took Ramirez six days of ruminating on the incident to determine that it was Kavanaugh who exposed himself to her, despite claiming she wasn’t sure prior to. Funny how far a little coaxing from the media goes.
And of course, Farrow and Mayer admit they have “not confirmed with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party.”
Even more damning is that people who were reportedly present at the party denied any wrongdoing on Kavanaugh’s part. Again, from The New Yorker report:
In a statement, two of those male classmates who Ramirez alleged were involved in the incident, the wife of a third male student she said was involved, and three other classmates, Dino Ewing, Louisa Garry, and Dan Murphy, disputed Ramirez’s account of events: “We were the people closest to Brett Kavanaugh during his first year at Yale. He was a roommate to some of us, and we spent a great deal of time with him, including in the dorm where this incident allegedly took place. Some of us were also friends with Debbie Ramirez during and after her time at Yale. We can say with confidence that if the incident Debbie alleges ever occurred, we would have seen or heard about it—and we did not. The behavior she describes would be completely out of character for Brett. In addition, some of us knew Debbie long after Yale, and she never described this incident until Brett’s Supreme Court nomination was pending. Editors from the New Yorker contacted some of us because we are the people who would know the truth, and we told them that we never saw or heard about this.”
A separate report also confirms that Ramirez wasn’t sure that Kavanaugh was the perpetrator and admitted as much to her former classmates when she contacted them. From a separate New York Times report:
The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.
.@nytimes: “Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.” https://t.co/TWuUcXiN8P
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) September 24, 2018
Even the White House has done a line-by-line refutation of The New Yorker story in an email sent to reporters last night:
INBOX: White House sends late-night email seizing on certain excerpts from New Yorker story, including Ramirez’s own acknowledgments of uncertainty and denials from those she claims were involved in the incident. pic.twitter.com/AZjrls9WoT
— Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) September 24, 2018
This whole thing stinks. Farrow and Mayer, normally intrepid journalists, were wrong to publish this story with such flimsy evidence. Ramirez’s accounts cannot be corroborated. Just like Ford’s, her memory is hazy and no eyewitnesses named will confirm it.
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That means her charges are based on her word only, which doesn’t constitute a case against Kavanaugh.
This isn’t journalism. It’s a hit job from partisan flacks.
