Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) unleashed a scathing response to the New York Times’ crumbling hit piece on Justice Brett Kavanaugh and noted the unlikelihood of 2020 Democrat presidential candidates modifying or retracting their calls for his impeachment.
“READ stunning NYT CORRECTION. If a high-school freshman did this on a school paper, he’d get an F,” Cruz wrote in a tweet Monday.
“This is an outfit that has won multiple Pulitzers; presumably they know how to be actual journalists. It’s almost as if the reporters, editors, publisher have a political agenda,” he continued:
The correction, written by NYT, reads: “the female student declined to be interviewed & friends say that SHE DOES NOT RECALL the incident. That information has been added to the article.” Please, somebody, try to give an explanation for omitting that central fact other than bias. Given the NYT “correction,” what are the odds that any of the 2020 Dem presidentials [sic] who relied on the NYT story to call for impeaching Kavanaugh (at last count, Warren, Sanders, Harris, Castro, O’Rourke & Booker) will modify or retract their own partisan position? ZERO.
Times staffers Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly published a story over the weekend teasing their upcoming book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation. They claimed to have uncovered a “previously unreported story” about Kavanaugh in college, which they said “echoes Ms. [Deborah] Ramirez’s allegation.” They wrote that a classmate, Max Stier — who served as a Bill Clinton defense attorney during the Monica Lewinsky scandal — saw Kavanaugh expose himself at a party and place his penis in the hand of a female student.
“We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier,” they wrote.
However, Stier refused to speak to them directly, and the alleged victim does not recall the alleged incident — a fact they acknowledged in their own book:
“These reporters published a story that didn’t include information that even they had in their own book,” senior editor at The Federalist, Mollie Hemingway, told Breitbart News Daily Monday.
“They themselves concede that the woman had never said anything about this publicly, and that through several friends … she had denied any knowledge of what this person was talking about,” she said.
“They also hid the fact that the person making the allegation is a Clinton-connected attorney,” she added.
The Times eventually conceded, adding the following editor’s note:
Editors’ Note: An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding as 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 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.
Despite that, the original report inspired 2020 candidates across the board to call for Kavanaugh’s impeachment.
“Last year the Kavanaugh nomination was rammed through the Senate without a thorough examination of the allegations against him,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote.
“Confirmation is not exoneration, and these newest revelations are disturbing,” she continued. “Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached”:
“Yesterday, we learned of another accusation against Brett Kavanaugh—one we didn’t find out about before he was confirmed because the Senate forced the F.B.I. to rush its investigation to save his nomination,” Beto O’Rourke (D) wrote.
“We know he lied under oath. He should be impeached,” he demanded:
More:
The same Democrat candidates did not immediately alter their positions on Twitter following the Times’ editor’s note debunking the accusatory story.