>> Brett Kavanaugh is back in the news after the New York Times published excerpts from
a new book that details some of the sexual assault allegations against him.
The excerpt from the education of Brett Kavanaugh, An Investigation was written by Times reporters
Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.
And they revisit an allegation that was raised during the Supreme Court justice's confirmation
process in 2018.
Some of you may have remembered this allegation.
This is not an allegation by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, but rather a former Yale classmate
of his named Deborah Ramirez.
Now Deborah Ramirez detailed a party that she went to, Kavanaugh was there.
And he allegedly did something pretty graphic that made her incredibly uncomfortable.
During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply.
She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett
Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it
away and inadvertently touch it.
Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening,
laughed.
Now Deborah Ramirez was quoted as saying, I had gone through high school, I'm a good
girl, and now, in one evening, it was all wiped way.
So, this has caused a firestorm.
There have been different reactions.
Of course, Donald Trump is angry about this and he believes that the Department of Justice
needs to protect Brett Kavanaugh even though that's not the job that the Department of
Justice is supposed to do.
Also, according to the Times reporting, by preying upon her in this way, Deborah Ramirez
added Kavanaugh and his friends made it clear I'm not smart.
And Ramirez didn't have this upbringing that was incredibly affluent.
Her parents did well.
She was studious, she was really hard working, and she made her way, she worked her way to
Yale.
And she felt as though no one really respected her.
She was different.
There were very few minorities at Yale in the 1980s.
And so this felt as if it was an attack on her and who she was as a person.
And it's obviously stayed with her throughout the years because she details it even today.
>> So Deborah Ramirez's story that we just recounted for you.
Most of that was already public record when Kavanaugh was up for a vote.
The new parts of the story are how many people who have confirmed it and then tried to reach
out to the FBI and what kind of a sham investigation that week that FBI looked into it was.
So along those lines, let me read the next couple of quotes for you guys from the New
York Times.
During his Senate testimony, Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ramirez described had
occurred, it would have been quote the talk of the campus.
Our reporting suggests that it was.
Now let me be clear about this.
They wrote a book about this, that these are the excerpts of the book, they are New York
Times reporters but this printed in their opinion section.
Okay, so now, the most relevant part is right here.
They say, at least seven people, including Ramirez's mother, heard about the Yale incident
long before Kavanaugh was a federal judge.
Two of those people were classmates who learned of it just days after the party occurred,
suggesting that it was discussed among students at the time.
So apparently it was a bit of the talk of campus.
Now, the FBI might have been able to uncover that, if they were allowed to.
If they had enough time and ability to.
But apparently, their investigation was hemmed in significantly.
And so, a very important question arises that's beyond even what should happen to Kavanaugh,
which is who told the FBI to do a very limited investigation that would not allow them to
talk to witnesses?
That's a very important question.
>> So I wanna go back to that FBI investigation and recount how it went down.
Because remember, the Republican Party gave the FBI a maximum of one week to do this investigation,
to conduct this investigation.
And they didn't even take the full week.
I remember the investigation wrapped up, just short of one week, and it was abundantly clear
that individuals who should have been interviewed as part of this investigation were not interviewed.
To give you more details, in regard to the information that was given to the FBI and
what the FBI just didn't look into.
According to the New York Time story, Ramirez's legal team gave the FBI a list of 25 individuals
who may have had corroborating evidence.
But the Bureau in its supplemental background investigation, interviewed none of them.
Though we learned many of these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the FBI on
their own.
And I just remember the day the FBI wrapped their investigation.
And I remember feeling sick to my stomach because I knew it was a sham, I knew that
they didn't really do much.
They interviewed a few people related to Doctor Ford but it just didn't seem real.
An investigation like that doesn't take first of all a week, it should take longer than
that and Republicans always get what they want because Democrats aren't gonna fight
I mean, they didn't, in my opinion, they didn't fight hard enough.
They just allowed Republicans to take hold of this investigation, really limit the scope.
And now we have a Supreme Court justice who might be a sexual predator or at least previously.
>> Yeah, so I wanna actually go to Ryan Grim's reporting, he's the Washington Bureau Chief
for The Intercept, and was also a TYT contributor.
In his book, we've got people.
He talks about both the things that Anna just mentioned.
First of all, a really interesting part of it was that two activists wound up pressuring
Jeff Flake in an elevator, if you remember that scene, to get him to not immediately
confirm Kavanaugh.
But Flake then after that incident quickly came up with this new idea which he then surprised
everyone with and said, the FBI should do an investigation for a week so we're more
sure.
It seemed to be a positive development and I don't know what Flake's intent was there,
maybe he did intend for a real investigation, but it was immediately taken over by the Republican
apparatchiks who then turned it into a sham investigation.
So when you have 25 witnesses that come forward and say.
Or their legal team gives you 25 witnesses and others come forward and say, please interview
me, I know what happened.
And the FBI says no, we're not allowed to talk to you.
Well okay then, who made that decision that you're not allowed to talk to them?
>> Yeah and it's not an investigation.
Let's keep it real- >> Real investigation.
>> Yeah, if you're looking into possible sexual assault or possible rape, that a Supreme Court
nominee might have committed in the past, you need to interview as many people as possible
who are coming forward with allegations.
I mean, it's so frustrating and infuriating that this is the way that it ended up.
And this is how it works in politics.
Republicans always get what they want because they're willing to pull whatever trick they
can to get it.
>> Yeah, and so there, ironically, it might have actually helped Kavanaugh.
Well, look, the FBI investigated and they cleared him, so he must be fine.
When in reality, it of course was not a real investigation as we now know and have learned.
Okay, now the second part of it is how did the Democrats react?
And both in this report by the New York Times and also in Ryan Grim's reporting, several
Democrats, most notably Dianne Feinstein who got the original letter from Christine Blasey
Ford, they didn't wanna look into it.
They thought it might hurt Democrats' chances electorally, and so they wanted to basically
cover it up, and- >> Yeah, because bending to the will of the
Republican party works out real well for you politically, right?
I mean- >> That's all they do.
>> To be quit honest with you, I feel embarrassed to be in any way associated to the Democratic
party, as a Democratic voter, right?
If this is what Democrats are about and honestly for the past few decades this is what they're
about.
It's embarrassing.
They're not fighters.
They're pathetic and they allowed this to happen.
I know that even if Democrats had the majority in the House and the Senate, okay?
They would be able to fight aggressively enough, Republicans would be able to fight aggressively
enough to still get what they wanted.
>> Yeah, and by the way, I mentioned Ryan's reporting on this because he's the one who
originally broke the first story about Christine Blasey Ford.
He didn't have the name yet, but he did unbelievable report, excellent reporting, I interviewed
him about it you shake it out on the conversation.
And how it confirmed that there was a woman out there with allegations, if it wasn't for
Ryan in the first place, it appears Dianne Feinstein would have never brought it forward.
It's unbelievable how complicit they are with the Republicans.
Now the final piece of this from The New York Times story is about Max Stier.
So let's go to that.
A classmate, Max Stier, saw Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm
party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.
Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the FBI
about his account, but the FBI did not investigate and Stier has declined to discuss it publicly.
Now an important clarification on that, the New York Times later put in in an editor's
note, that the woman who was apparently involved in that incident has not talked to the New
York Times or the writers of this book.
And says that she cannot recall that, okay?
So that's important for you to know but if Stier is right about that, well, that's the
second time that Kavanaugh would have done this, that this is not related to the Ramirez
but would back up the Ramirez story is another time that he did it.
>> Yeah, and so right now, there are members of the right including Donald Trump, who are
claiming that this entire New York Times investigation and this entire book is nothing more than
a witch hunt because one of the women who might have allegedly been involved in another
case where Kavanaugh allegedly revealed himself, doesn't remember, doesn't recall it, right?
So that doesn't prove anything.
That doesn't mean that it absolutely didn't happen, it doesn't mean that it absolutely
did happen.
It means that she can't remember.
But Deborah Ramirez Details what allegedly happened to her from beginning to end.
And by the way, I can't think of any woman who would be dumb enough to make this up,
and go out in the public to deal with the type of vicious and horrendous behavior that
we see from members of the right.
The non stop death threats.
Donald Trump mocking sexual assault victims during campaign rally events.
I mean, it's a horrible way to be out there in the public.
I just think there should have been a full investigation because to me, I don't know
if Brett Kavanagh's innocent.
I don't know.
So yeah, I think you're right in that Republicans could point to a sham investigation and say,
see they did an investigation.
He's innocent.
But for people who actually know the details of the story, no, he's not.
We don't know for sure, that wasn't a real investigation and I'm always gonna look at
him as someone who could potentially be a sexual predator.
>> Okay, and the last thing about this is Abby Hunstman then went on The View and said,
you see, the New York Times is gonna get Donald Trump reelected.
I can't stand that, it drives me crazy because they say, well, since the New York Times had
to put in the editor's note at the end, and not correct, but clarify something that was
in that article, they're like, well, see, then it's gonna show that everything is fake
news.
No it doesn't.
It shows that they cared to clarify and get things right afterwards even if their original
story had even a slight issue.
On the other hand, you have Donald Trump, who tells lies at an astounding and record
breaking rate.
So when people on TV go, well, the New York Times clarified a small part of the story,
and they equated to what Donald Trump does.
And then say, see they're going to get Trump elected, they're helping Donald Trump and
the Republican Party by doing a false equivalency.
And so they are not the same thing.
And by the way, Trump supporters who hate the New York Times and think that it's fake
news.
They're gonna vote for Trump anyway.
So stop with this idiocy of like, somebody was on the fence.
They couldn't tell if Trump's a liar or not.
>> Yeah.
>> And the New York Times has to do a slight clarification.
Well, that's it, I'm voting for Trump, that they were gonna vote for Trump anyway.
>> Don't let anyone on the right, anyone in the media make you think that the problem
here is the New York Times.
The New York Times is not the problem.
There are two groups of people that are the problem.
The Republican Party that went out of its way to cover up for Brett Kavanaugh and prevent
a real investigation from happening and the FBI, which refused to actually interview individuals
that it should have interviewed when it came to this case.
Those are the bad guys.
Those are the ones we should be focusing on.
I'm tired of Republicans taking hold of every narrative and the media just runs with it.
No, I'm not gonna let that happen.
We need to tell the truth.
The New York Times is not in the wrong here, period.
>> I'm sorry, I gotta add one more thing.
Which is that the Republicans and Donald Trump cry about, my God, when the FBI came after
Donald Trump, they politicized the FBI Andrew McCabe and James Comey, and all those guys.
Now they turn around and in this case look like they politicize the FBI and told them
what not to investigate.
>> What does FBI really do, really- >> No, the FBI does good work-
>> Do they though, do they?
>> They've stopped a lot of domestic terrorism cases, etc.
So it's a mixed bag so we report the good, the bad, etc, but and then-
>> I love their limited scope investigations when it involves anyone on the right whether
it be Donald Trump or Brett Kavanaugh, any high level Republican figure conservative
figure, limited scope, limited scope.
Are their investigations limited in scope when they're investigating other individuals?
I mean, how many stories have we done about the FBI going after some random private citizen
who posted rap lyrics on Facebook?
>> Yeah, so- >> Come on.
>> And even in this case Donald Trump says, The Justice Department should protect Kavanaugh.
So while pretending that the Justice Department and the FBI politicize the Trump investigation,
which they most clearly did not, it's based on overwhelming evidence, they turn around
and brazenly say in public, we should politicize the Justice Department and the FBI to suit
our own political purposes.
There is no false equivalency here.
One side loves to politicize those organisations and cover up the reality.
And the other side, in the case of the media reports the reality here