was in high school, and it has remained true to this day.”12
Some sixty-five women, with a broad range of political views, signed the letter that night, but they didn’t want to go public with it if doing so would fuel the interest in a story they thought should be dismissed as ridiculous. So they waited to send it.
On Friday morning, the New Yorker published a story by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer providing more information about the allegation. Farrow, who had received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the sexual assault allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, had written about several other clients of Debra Katz, who had served as a source for him.13 Farrow and Mayer reported:
In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.14
Now that there were some specifics to respond to, Kavanaugh announced: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
The follow-up phone call that Kavanaugh and Senator Collins had agreed to have after their meeting at her office was scheduled for this day. At the end of the call, Collins dismissed her staff from her office so she could discuss the matter with him privately. He categorically denied the charge. The first thing Collins noticed was that the letter to Senator Feinstein was dated July 30. She was flabbergasted that such serious allegations had been held until the last moment.
The New Yorker’s new details about the allegation provoked rampant speculation among Kavanaugh’s classmates and friends. Who might have a grudge against Kavanaugh? Who might have interpreted an interaction in such a way? Nobody in his set of friends believed that Kavanaugh had done what was alleged. An erroneous report that the accuser was a professor at Stanford University caused speculation briefly to focus on the wrong woman. But even with the meager details provided, reporters and investigators narrowed their search for the accuser to three women in the Bay Area who fit the profile of having graduated from a Washington-area high school.
Once it became clear the story wasn’t being dismissed, the letter from women who knew Kavanaugh in high school was sent to the Judiciary Committee, which released it on Friday afternoon. The women were immediately bombarded with phone calls from reporters and harassed on social media platforms.
John Bresnahan, the Capitol bureau chief for Politico, tweeted that the letter showed that Republicans “knew about this high-school rape allegation.” A half-hour later, he noted that committee Republicans denied knowing the substance of the Feinstein letter or the nature of the allegations. “But clearly it took some effort,” he insisted, to find “65 women who attended high school at same time as Kavanaugh 30-odd years ago. This took some time to round up signatures.”15 In fact, Meghan McCaleb had responded to public news reports, confirming that it had taken her only a few hours to compose the letter and collect the signatures.
Kavanaugh’s friends and colleagues of both sexes had been appearing on television throughout the confirmation process, but now it was time for women to take the lead. On Friday evening, McCaleb appeared on Laura Ingraham’s television show with Helgi Walker, a colleague of Kavanaugh’s in the White House counsel’s office, and Porter Wilkinson, who had clerked for him. All four women vouched for his character and integrity.
Walker and Ingraham, who had clerked for Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court, noted that his name had already come up in the coverage of the allegations against Kavanaugh. After the New Yorker story was published, Thomas’s accuser, Anita Hill, called for a “fair and neutral process.”16 Memories of Thomas’s contentious confirmation battle shaped many people’s reactions to the allegations against Kavanaugh.
Clarence Thomas was nominated on July 1, 1991, by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat vacated by Thurgood Marshall, one of the Court’s most prominent liberals. Because