Deborah Ramirez, the woman who says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was sexually inappropriate with her when they were both students at Yale University, came forward with her story because senators were starting to investigate her, Ronan Farrow, who wrote about her in The New Yorker, said Monday.
"This is a woman who did not come forward in a press release," Farrow told CNN's "New Day" program. "Her story was recounted unbeknownst to her, to senators, who began looking at this claim, and she was placed in the middle of a firestorm.”
He also said he felt comfortable running the story because there is a "strong evidentiary basis" behind Ramirez' claims.
In their article, Farrow and co-writer Jane Mayer reported that Ramirez claims that Kavanaugh exposed himself during a dorm party and coerced her to touch his penis. However, The New York Times reported Sunday that there are no witnesses to her claims and that she herself told some former classmates that she wasn't sure if Kavanaugh was the person who had been involved.
Farrow, though, defended his story and Ramirez' comments, saying that she took several days to determine if she "wanted to cast herself into this maelstrom."
This, he said, is " an acknowledgment of the fact that there were gaps in her memory, as is so often the case with traumatic memories influenced by alcohol. But also an indication of her extraordinary degree of caution.”
Further, Farrow said he had gotten "several direct accounts from people who said they were told right after… who independently of Ms. Ramirez recounted the same fact pattern about Brett Kavanaugh doing this.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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