New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly said that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed to let them interview him for their upcoming book ― as long as they would publicly lie about it.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Kelly and Pogrebin said that Kavanaugh said he would talk to the reporters to provide them with background information as long as they falsely noted in the book that he declined to be interviewed.
Reporters from The Atlantic and The Washingtonian shared the Times reporters’ revelation on Twitter.
The Times reporters said their talks about setting up an interview with Kavanaugh took place when the book was in its final stages.
Kelly and Pogrebin said they couldn’t agree to the justice’s terms, so they couldn’t conduct the interview.
Kelly and Pogrebin reached out to the associate justice as part of a 10-month investigation into his educational background and the accusations of sexual misconduct against him for their book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,” published this week.
Days before the book was released, Kelly and Pogrebin published an op-ed in the Times that included a previously unreported accusation made against Kavanaugh.
The reporters said that Max Steier, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, told them he once saw Kavanaugh with his pants down while his friends pushed his penis into the hands of a female student during a drunken dorm party.
The woman at the center of Steier’s account declined to be interviewed by the Times reporters, and her friends say she doesn’t recall that incident, according to the Times.
Steier’s account, as reported by the paper, is similar to an allegation lodged against Kavanaugh last year by Deborah Ramirez, another former Yale classmate.
Ramirez said that she was at a dorm room party with Kavanaugh and several others playing a drinking game when Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. She pushed him away, she told The New Yorker last year, causing her to touch his penis.
Ramirez came forward with her allegation after Christine Blasey Ford publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers. Ford testified at his Supreme Court nomination hearing.