Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached on Sunday after the New York Times ran a piece Saturday alleging that an eyewitness saw friends of Kavanaugh push “his penis into the hand of” a female student at a college party.
The Times later added to its piece on Sunday evening that the female student did not recall the incident, according to friends, and declined to comment:
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.
However, before the Times added what amounted to a walk-back of the new allegation, Democrats such as Omar began lining up for calls for Kavanaugh’s impeachment.
On Sunday she tweeted, “Nothing terrifies this corrupt president more than the idea of Congress upholding the rule of law. We must open impeachment inquiries against Trump *and* Kavanaugh immediately. It’s our constitutional duty”:
Omar has not commented or taken back her tweet as of Monday.
The Times piece was adapted from a forthcoming book by two Times journalists Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly titled The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.
The walk-back of the allegation was prompted by backlash from conservative media commentators and journalists, led by The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, who had received an early copy of the book and noted that the book itself said that the alleged victim did not recall the incident.
After the Times acquiesced in an “Editors’ note,” the paper was criticized by the right and the left for omitting the important detail that the alleged female victim did not recall the incident.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough questioned why the Times originally left out that the alleged victim could not recall the episode.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said Monday, according to the Washington Examiner. “We were on the phone yesterday asking each other, wait a second, there’s a woman who [Max] Stier claims was abused by Kavanaugh. Has she denied this? Has she claimed this happened? Why is there this glaring omission in the New York Times story?”
“I could not believe the New York Times would write this piece without that information contained in it,” he added.
The Times piece also failed to mention that the person making the new allegation, Max Stier, had served on former President Bill Clinton’s defense team during impeachment proceedings. Kavanaugh had served on independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s team.
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