New Yorker reporter: New woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault was not initial source for report

New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer said Monday that word of alleged sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while he was in college had made its way to the Senate and the media before the magazine reached out to his accuser. 

“She didn’t come forward with it,” Mayer said NBC’s “Today.”

{mosads}“What happened was, the classmates at Yale were talking to each other about it, they were emailing about it. We’ve seen the emails, back in July before Christine Blasey Ford came forward, and eventually the word of it spread,” Mayer added, referring to the woman who earlier this month publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while the two were in high school.

Mayer noted that the latest allegations eventually “spread to the Senate” and “to the media,” which led to her and New Yorker contributing writer Ronan Farrow reaching out to the woman.

“After giving it really careful consideration for six days, she decided to talk to [Farrow],” she said. 

Her comments came a day after Mayer and Farrow authored a report detailing a sexual assault accusation against Kavanaugh stemming from his time as a student at Yale University in the 1980s.

Deborah Ramirez is accusing Kavanaugh of exposing himself in front of her and causing her to touch his penis when she pushed him away during a party while the two were in college.

Ramirez has admitted that she was drunk when the alleged incident took place, but expressed confidence that her memory is accurate after discussing it with a lawyer. 

“We wouldn’t have run this if we didn’t have a careful basis of people who had heard at the time and found her credible,” Farrow said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday.

Kavanaugh has denied the claim, calling it a “smear, plain and simple.” 

The New Yorker report notes that at least two Democratic offices are investigating the incident. The story was published a week after Ford came forward and detailed an alleged sexual assault committed by Kavanaugh while they were in high school.