Kavanaugh allies ask to have signatures removed from statement supporting him

Two of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's former classmates asked The New Yorker to remove their names from a statement they signed in support of the Supreme Court nominee.

On Sunday night, The New Yorker published an article by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow about a woman, Deborah Ramirez, who said while she was at Yale University, her classmate, Kavanaugh, exposed himself to her at a party. Mayer and Farrow spoke to former classmates who said they remembered hearing about such an incident, others who believed Ramirez's word, and some who said Kavanaugh would never expose himself.

The article included a statement prepared by Kavanaugh's attorneys and signed by two of the male classmates Ramirez said were at the party, the wife of a third male student Ramirez said was involved in the incident, and additional classmates. The signatories agreed they were "the people closest to Brett Kavanaugh during his first year at Yale" and could declare "with confidence that if the incident Debbie alleges ever occurred, we would have seen or heard about it — and we did not. The behavior she describes would be completely out of character for Brett."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On Monday evening, The New Yorker updated the article to reflect that two classmates who originally signed the statement, Louisa Garry and Dino Ewing, approached the magazine after the article was published and asked that their names be removed. Garry said she "never saw or heard anything like this. But I cannot dispute Ramirez's allegations, as I was not present." Ewing said he did not have direct knowledge of the incident and did not think it sounded like Kavanaugh, but "I also was not present and therefore am not in a position to directly dispute Ramirez's account."