Tipsheet

Nice Job, Media: You Really Wanted That Fourth Kavanaugh Accusation To Be Credible, Huh?

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  September 27, 2018 8:45 AM

There’s a fourth accuser that dropped at zero hour? Oh no! Except, like the other allegations of sexual misconduct lobbed at Brett Kavanaugh, there’s no evidence. Heck, there’s no name. Someone sent an anonymous letter to Sen. Cory Gardner’s (R-CO) office, which Politico and many others picked up on last night. There’s no name, return address, or any contact information of any kind, but the elite news media decided to peddle it as something legitimate anyway:

An anonymous woman wrote to Sen. Cory Gardner’s (R-Colo.) office on Sept. 22 alleging that the Supreme Court nominee shoved another woman “up against the wall very aggressively and sexually” in 1998 after leaving a bar where both had been drinking, the transcript states. Kavanaugh denied any involvement in the events alleged in that complaint, which was first reported by NBC.

“It's ridiculous. Total twilight zone. And no, I've never done anything like that,” Kavanaugh told Judiciary panel staff when asked about the anonymous complaint on Tuesday, the transcript states. That interview was conducted under penalty of felony.

The misconduct claim from 1998 follows three separate allegations of untoward sexual behavior against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee in recent days. Gardner's office said in a statement that the letter "contained no name or no contact info" and was shared with staff in both parties after it was received.

It has been shared between Democratic and Republican staffs, but no contact information. How is this even an accusation, then? Thankfully, the Senate Judiciary Committee is moving on since there’s nothing to go on with this letter. CNN and others surely peddled it. Then, two men now say they might have been mistaken for Kavanaugh in one of the accusations (via Fox News):

As an extraordinary series of uncorroborated, lurid last-minute allegations threatens to derail his confirmation to the Supreme Court, nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Ford, the California professor accusing him of sexually assaulting her more than three decades ago, are set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday morning.

The proceedings may be upended by late-breaking developments: On Wednesday evening, Judiciary Committee Republicans revealed that on Monday, they conducted their "first interview with a man who believes he, not Judge Kavanaugh, had the encounter with Dr. Ford in 1982 that is the basis of his complaint." They conducted a second interview the next day. 

On Wednesday, Republicans said, they received a "more in-depth written statement from the man interviewed twice previously who believes he, not Judge Kavanuagh, had the encounter in question with Dr. Ford." GOP investigators also spoke on the phone with another man making a similar claim.

Oh, and a Rhode Island man who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting one of his friends said, “He made a mistake." So, that's the fifth accusation that's been nixed (via Daily Caller):

A Rhode Island man who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting his friend apologized on Wednesday and said he “made a mistake.”

The man called Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s office and claimed that Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, a high school friend of Kavanaugh, drunkenly sexually assaulted one of his friends, according to interview transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A committee investigator asked Kavanaugh about the allegation during an interview on Tuesday, which he denied.

The man’s name was redacted in the transcripts released to the public but the investigator quoted verbatim several outlandish anti-Trump tweets from the man’s Twitter account, allowing reporters to identify him on Twitter as “Jeffrey Catalan.”

That’s quite a whirlwind of news hours before this testimony is set to begin. The fireworks begin soon. At the same time, the atmosphere could be dialed down a bit if the anti-Trump media didn’t go bananas over a nothingburger of a letter.