Brett accuser’s story ‘makes no sense’
A high-school pal of Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford says in a new book that she’s skeptical of Ford’s claim the future Supreme Court justice sexually assaulted her at a party in the 1980s.
“I don’t have any confidence in the story,” Leland Keyser — who Ford has said was at the party where the alleged assault occurred — told two New York Times reporters in their book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.”
“Those facts together I don’t recollect, and it just didn’t make any sense,” Keyser insisted of Ford’s account, according to authors Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.
Last year, Ford testified at Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation that Keyser was at the Maryland house party in the summer of 1982 when Kavanaugh, then 17, attacked her. Ford was 15 at the time.
Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, pushed her into a room and that Kavanaugh forced her onto a bed, tried to remove her bathing suit and attempted to rape her.
Keyser was downstairs when the alleged assault took place, Ford said.
But in the new book, released Tuesday, Keyser threw cold water on that scenario.
“It would be impossible for me to be the only girl at a get-together with three guys, have her leave and then not figure out how she’s getting home,” Keyser told the authors. “I just really didn’t have confidence in the story.”
At the time of the Senate hearing, Keyser’s lawyer, Howard Walsh, wrote an e-mail to the committee saying his client didn’t know Kavanaugh and didn’t recall being at the party with him.
But in a revised statement soon after, Walsh said Keyser “does not refute Dr. Ford’s account, and she has already told the press that she believes Dr. Ford’s account.”
Keyser was being pressured by Ford’s allies from high school to do more to help their friend — and things were getting dirty, according to the book.
In a group text, one woman wrote of Keyser, “Maybe one of you guys who are friends with her can have a heart to heart. I don’t care, frankly, how f--ked up her life is. A lot of us have f--ked up lives in one way or another.’’
Another texter, apparently referring to what the book called Keyser’s “addictive tendencies,’’ said, “Perhaps it makes sense to let everyone in the public know what her condition is. Just a thought.’’
The authors say Keyser told them, “I was told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn’t comply.’’
The troubling new details came as controversy continued to swirl over the tome — and an article that the authors wrote over the weekend for the Times drawing from their book.
The article, which came out before the book, revealed a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh at a booze-filled dorm party while he was at Yale University later in the ’80s.
Another guy at the party, Max Stier, has told people he saw Kavanaugh with his pants down and then the future justice’s pals push his penis into a woman’s hand, according to the book.
President Trump said Tuesday that Kavanaugh “has been just really devastated by the hurt that’s been caused to him’’ by the allegations.
“It’s so unfair. He’s a good man,’’ the president said.