Did Brett Kavanaugh perjure himself in front of the Senate? That’s the new narrative liberals are pushing – in a clear reminder that the truth of the sexual harassment allegations against Kavanaugh are secondary to obstructing his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice.
It all begins with the allegations of accuser Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that the future Supreme Court Justice had exposed himself to her drunkenly at a college party, put his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.
The allegations first surfaced in a piece published at the The New Yorker by alleged journalists Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer. Ramirez apparently went over 30 years without knowing if Kavanaugh assaulted her or not, then after nearly a week of coaching from liberals, the memory conveniently popped into her head. To quote the New Yorker, Ramirez recounted the incident “After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney.”
One can only wonder what “assessing her memories” for six days consisted of, but it’s certainly not anything which would fly in a court of law.
The allegations are utterly unsubstantiated, but some liberals think they caught Kavanaugh perjuring himself when discussing them under oath. According to the left-wing Slate; “Brett Kavanaugh and his team were in contact with former classmates and friends in an attempt to refute, before publication in the New Yorker last month, Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez’s allegation.” (Emphasis added.) NBC News was the first to publish the texts.
Why is that supposedly relevant? The Slate article argues that this is damning for a number of reasons, because; “Kavanaugh said, under oath during his testimony last week, that the first time he had heard of Ramirez’s allegations was in the New Yorker story. The text messages would indicated that that is not true and would get to the larger point that Kavanaugh has not told the truth in a number of instances during the confirmation process, and potentially perjured himself… Finally, the fact that Kavanaugh was personally interacting and coordinating with people who might later be called as witnesses could be legally perilous.”
An interesting set of theories, but all completely bogus. The claim that Kavanaugh was “interacting and coordinating with people” ahead of the New Yorker piece being published was fake news from NBC (more on the in a moment).
Take note that they omit most of the actual transcript. All their evidence simply shows that someone in his group seemed to know Ramirez was trying to accuse him of something. Here is the relevant part of the interview Kavanaugh did:
Note: "Incident matching this description" pic.twitter.com/YlBdRMEjma
— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) October 1, 2018
And now NBC, which was the first to publish Kavanaugh’s texts, added an extra paragraph to their story, clarifying that Kavanaugh’s texts about Ramirez’s story were two days after the New Yorker piece was published, not before. That’s a major detail that completely debunks the theory that Kavanaugh had tried to discredit Ramirez before she could publicly come forward – and yet NBC made that stealth-edit without a retraction, correction, or editor’s note.
The NBC story accusing Kavanaugh of perjury has been updated—without any note, or acknowledgement of that fact—and now includes a reference to the full September 25th testimony that flatly contradicts the claim being made. And yet NBC is still pushing it. pic.twitter.com/6Xt6ifH9m2
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) October 2, 2018
And yet despite that, the headline on NBC’s article is still “Text messages suggest Kavanaugh wanted to refute accuser’s claim before it became public.”
Fake news indeed. This little fable could stand-in as a metaphor for this entire Kabuki drama.
