The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said that a former Yale classmate who accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in a New York Times report over the weekend never told the panel.
Max Stier told two Times reporters writing an anti-Kavanaiugh book that the future justice, when an undergraduate student decades ago, exposed himself as other students pushed his genitals into a female student’s hands at a party.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, told reporters the report is the first he’d heard of it.
“That person, Mr. Stier, didn’t reach out or provide information to the committee majority,” Mr. Grassley said during a Senate floor speech. “My office never received anything from Mr. Stier or his unnamed friends.”
But Mr. Grassley, whose panel oversaw the Kavanaugh confirmation process, said Monday that his staff members would have interviewed Mr. Stier and investigated a charge that resembled that in The Times had they been told.
“Had my staff received substantive allegations or had he approached me or my staff, we would have attempted to take a statement and interview him,” he said Monday.
In his floor speech, Mr. Grassley denounced The New York Times for “some embarrassing, irresponsible missteps.”
“This is not an allegation. It’s barely a third-hand rumor,” he said.
Among other things, The Times report initially hadn’t noted that the woman in Mr. Stier’s account does not recall any such misconduct.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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