The Education of Brett Kavanaugh

September 23, 2019
Journalists Pogrebin and Kelly (Street Fighters) expand on their New York Times coverage of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 confirmation hearings in this measured, methodical account. Readers who followed the hearings will be familiar with the major events: the letter sent by Stanford University research psychologist Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to California senator Dianne Feinstein accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault in high school; the emergence of a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a Yale University party in the 1980s, causing her to inadvertently touch his penis; the back-to-back testimonies delivered by Ford and Kavanaugh to the Senate judiciary committee; and Arizona senator Jeff Flake's demand that the FBI be allowed to investigate the accusations. Pogrebin and Kelly reveal that the FBI didn't investigate an eyewitness claim that Kavanaugh had exposed himself on another occasion in college (the alleged victim told friends she didn't recall the incident) and report that he may have reached out to at least one college classmate to coordinate the response to Ramirez's allegations. Pogrebin and Kelly conclude that Ford and Ramirez were "mistreated" by Kavanaugh, yet "over the next thirty-five years became a better person." Judiciously reported yet lacking in substantive analysis of the larger issues involved, this blow-by-blow chronicle feels more like a second draft of history than the definitive version.