The advocacy group The Committee for Justice on Monday denounced The New York Times for its story on allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The Times' article focuses mainly on the accusation made by Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh's at Yale University, but also mentions a previously unreported story about another classmate who notified senators and the FBI to an alleged incident from college earlier this year, but it was not investigated or made public.
"The New York Times had egg on its face Sunday night when its sensational new sexual assault allegation against Justice Kavanaugh collapsed after the paper admitted that it forgot to mention that the victim 'declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident,'" said Committee for Justice president Curt Levey in a statement.
"Their embarrassing overreach could have been avoided had they bothered to read the Times piece, which openly relied on hearsay provided by anonymous sources concerning a supposed witness who just happened to be an adversary of Kavanaugh during the Ken Starr investigation. Likewise, if the would-be presidents had, like others, requested an advance copy of the book on which the story is based. The book reveals that the alleged victim has no memory of the incident."
Ashley Baker, the Committee for Justice's Director of Public Policy, added in a letter to The Boston Globe that "the unfortunate reality is that what we witnessed with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings may be just a trial run for the next confirmation fight."