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People Are Paying Too Much Attention To One Kavanaugh Allegation, Author Says

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The author of a book containing misconduct allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the press and the public have paid disproportionate attention to one accusation.

Robin Pogrebin said Tuesday to WMAL’s “Mornings on the Mall” that the allegation does not feature prominently in the book or in an article she wrote for The New York Times Sunday Review, where the accusation first appeared on Sept. 14.

One of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmates, Max Stier, saw the future Supreme Court justice expose himself at a campus party while friends pushed his penis toward a female bystander, Pogrebin and co-author Kate Kelly’s account said.

“We did not lead with this Max Stier allegation,” Pogrebin said. “We did not put a news story on the front of The New York Times saying, ‘Another Allegation Against Kavanaugh.’ That was our decision. That is not the thrust of our book, that there’s a new allegation. That’s what the takeaway is right now because no one has had the book and has seen its totality.”

“But actually, if you see it, it’s two paragraphs in an almost 300-page book,” Pogrebin added. “We did not make a lot of this. The world is making a lot of this. We just put out every fact that we could find that hadn’t been reported previously. This was one of them.” 

Times editors subsequently updated Pogrebin’s article to reflect that the alleged female victim was not interviewed, while friends said she has no memory of the incident. President Donald Trump suggested the Times’ handling of the account is libelous.

Pogrebin said elsewhere in Tuesday’s interview that readers should withhold judgment until reading the book in full. The account, she said, creates a complicated picture that is favorable to Kavanaugh in many respects.

“People are seizing on what they want to seize on, but there’s a much fuller picture here, which is what we wanted to portray,” she said.

Pogrebin’s book released Tuesday is “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.”