The Smears Begin on Kavanaugh The left tries some #MeToo guilt by association.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-smears-begin-on-kavanaugh-1531438269

The political left is going to do whatever it can to defeat Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and the smears have begun even earlier than usual. This week’s mud on the wall includes a claim of guilt by association when Mr. Kavanaugh was a law clerk 27 years ago.

In 1990-1991 Mr. Kavanaugh clerked for federal Judge Alex Kozinski on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Kozinski retired in December after he was accused by several women, including a former federal judge, of harassing behavior such as groping and showing them pornography.

The McClatchy news service reported Wednesday that a left-wing outfit called Ultraviolet is circulating a six-page memo demanding that Senate Democrats investigate whether Mr. Kavanaugh knew about Mr. Kozinski’s behavior a quarter-century ago. Think of this as the claims in the Christopher Steele Russia dossier without the evidence.

The Ultraviolet sleaze-slingers have no evidence that Mr. Kavanaugh knew about Judge Kozinski’s behavior and no witnesses to anything of the sort. They merely have insinuations that in the age of social media can spread around the world before the truth can even get a hearing. We’re told that journalists from several news organizations are also trolling former Kozinski clerks to see if they can find someone who will say that Judge Kavanaugh knew something, or should have known, about Judge Kozinski’s behavior.

All of which caused the White House to issue a statement Thursday addressing the smears by ancient association that are by now circulating widely on the internet and in the press corps. “Prior to the public reports late last year [about Judge Kozinski], Judge Kavanaugh had never heard any allegations of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment by Judge Kozinski,” White House spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.

The White House also released a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee signed by 18 of Judge Kavanaugh’s former female clerks attesting to “our uniformly positive experiences with the Judge as a boss on issues of gender and equality in the workplace.” Amy Chua of Yale writes nearby of her rewarding experience placing law clerks with Judge Kavanaugh.

It used to be that the press required at least some evidence to report a story, but now a politically motivated group can write a memo without incriminating facts and get it reported as news. Fair-minded Americans should treat it as the drive-by innuendo it is.

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