New York Times Walks Back Brett Kavanaugh Story; Deletes ‘Offensive’ Tweet

The New York Times is walking back an opinion piece published this weekend that revealed new salacious allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.

The opinion piece, written by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, was part of a promotion for an upcoming book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, that looks into the veracity and Congressional handling of allegations of sexual misconduct that came about during Kavanaugh’s highly contentious and eventually successful Supreme Court nomination. 

The report focuses on newly uncovered allegations surrounding Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale at the same time as Kavanaugh and describes a party scene featuring untoward behavior:

During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening, laughed

Details from the report caused a significant media firestorm over the weekend, fueled in part by tweets by President Donald Trump that suggested Kavanaugh should sue for “libel” over the allegations included in the report published Saturday.

On Sunday, the New York Times updated the post and removed a section that was not corroborated by a key individual that was part of the story. The correction explains:

Editors’ Note: Sept. 15, 2019
An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.

The Twitter feed for the New York Times Opinion also apologized and deleted a tweet that included an excerpt of the allegation:

We deleted a previous tweet regarding this article. It was offensive, and we apologize. https://t.co/gbUdweKbDg

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) September 15, 2019

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