Kavanaugh Book Co-Authors Say NYT Editors Cut Key Detail About Alleged Victim Not Remembering the Assault
The co-authors of a new book about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the New York Times Review essay based on their book originally included a key detail about a previously unknown, alleged sexual assault victim of Kavanaugh’s — that the woman tells friends she does not remember the incident — but that it was subsequently removed by the Times during the final editing process.
Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, appearing on MSNBC’s Last Word, told host Lawrence O’Donnell that they had added in this new claim from their book as context for the account of Deborah Ramirez another Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s. Ramirez came forward during last year’s confirmation hearing with a similar claim that he had forced his penis onto her hand at a party when they were both in college.
Their essay ignited a firestorm of criticism aimed at the Times over the weekend, for both a dismissive, inappropriate Tweet promoting the story and the fact that the paper belatedly appended an editor’s note explaining that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed and that she cannot recall the attack. Then on Monday, another report surfaced that the Times news side refused to run a story on the book’s claims because of questions about its news value, which is why it was instead published in the opinion section.
“What happened with that omission that the Times later felt belonged in the piece?” O’Donnell asked the pair at the beginning of the interview.
“There was zero intent to mislead anybody about the details of the incident,” said Kelly, who covers Wall Street for the Times. “It really focuses on the experience of Deborah Ramirez as we understand it, after Robin spending quite a bit of time with her, why the incident hit so hard for her. She was feeling like a fish out of water that first year at Yale to begin with for any number of reasons: socioeconomic, cultural, and so on. And this incident was deeply traumatizing for her. That was the focus of the piece. We included the additional detail of this other unreported allegation because it seemed germane.”
“In your draft, did it include those words that have since been added to the article?” O’Donnell followed up.
“It did,” both Kelly and Pogrebin confirmed.
“So somewhere in the editing process, those words were dropped?” O’Donnell asked.
“It was in editing — done in haste in the editing process as you know for closing the section,” Pogrebin said. “I think what happened, actually, was we had her name and, you know, the Times doesn’t usually include the name of the victim And so I think in this case the editors felt like maybe it was probably better to remove it. And in removing her name, they removed the other reference to the fact that she didn’t remember it.”
O’Donnell then asked if the two were involved in adding in the editor’s note.
“We discussed it. There was so much heat, you know, everyone has been kind of seizing on various aspects that we didn’t want this to be an issue anymore,” Pogrebin said. “And we certainly never intended to mislead in any way. We wanted to give as full a story as possible.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
