Carrie Severino: Latest Kavanaugh allegations a shameful attempt to reignite baseless smears
Author of 'Justice on Trial' Carrie Severino weighs in on the controversy over the New York Times story.
The short-lived new "allegations" against Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh were so weak that Senate investigators didn't follow up on them during the confirmation process, author Carrie Severino said Monday.
"This is the weakest of the weak type of allegations. It's really a shameful attempt to reignite these smears against Judge Kavanaugh that are utterly baseless," said Severino, the founder of the Judicial Crisis Network, on "Fox & Friends."
Late Sunday, the New York Times walked back an explosive report about a resurfaced allegation of sexual assault by Kavanaugh from his college days.
The Times piece by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, adapted from their forthcoming book, alleged there was corroboration of an incident in which Kavanaugh, as a college student at Yale, exposed himself to a female classmate at a party. News of the supposed "bombshell" prompted calls from numerous 2020 Democratic candidates to impeach Kavanaugh.
In a major revision late Sunday, a Times editors' note added a significant detail — that several friends of the alleged victim said she did not recall the purported sexual assault in question at all. The Times also stated for the first time that the alleged victim had refused to be interviewed and has made no comment about the episode.
The only firsthand statement concerning the supposed attack in the original piece, which was published on Saturday, came from a Clinton-connected lawyer who claimed to have witnessed it.
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The Times' revision says: "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 an 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 that 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."
Severino, who co-authored "Justice on Trial" with Mollie Hemingway on the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, said she read the new book that was the basis for the Times piece and it contains no new corroboration for any of the allegations against Kavanaugh.
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"Now they're trying to peddle these allegedly 'new' allegations, which were reported to Senate Democrats at the time, and they were so weak that even the incredibly credulous Senate staffers did not follow up on them," said Severino.
Severino said she believes liberals are trying to "intimidate the court ... and Justice Kavanaugh" and use the allegations to try to build momentum for impeaching Kavanaugh.
She said the book, similar to her and Hemingway's reporting, contains evidence that "undercuts" the allegations against Kavanaugh. She described the information as being "buried" in the book by Pogrebin and Kelly.
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.