The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

#FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on #FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

 

Thursday, we reported (“Grassley Refers Creepy Porn Lawyer and His Lying Client for FBI Investigation”) that Julie Swetnick and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, are suspected of giving false statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.

Now, NBC News is admitting that another one of Avenatti’s clients, whose affidavit he provided as corroborating Swetnick’s tales of attending gang-rape parties with Kavanaugh, contradicted those claims:

When Sen. Chuck Grassley referred attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Justice Department for criminal investigation Thursday, he cited Swetnick’s interview with NBC News as evidence the two were trying to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the NBC News interview that aired on Oct. 1, Swetnick back-tracked on or contradicted parts of her sworn statement where she alleged she witnessed then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of boys.”
NBC News also found other apparent inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman whose statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bid to bolster Swetnick’s claims.
In the second statement, the unidentified woman said she witnessed Kavanaugh “spike” the punch at high school parties in order to sexually take advantage of girls. But less than 48 hours before Avenatti released her sworn statement on Twitter, the same woman told NBC News a different story. . . .
The statement also said that Kavanaugh was “overly aggressive and verbally abusive to girls. This conduct included inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature.”
But reached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only “skimmed” the declaration. After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: “It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn’t see anyone spike the punch…I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.” . . .
In a subsequent text on Oct. 5, she wrote, “I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words.”

This is enormously significant, as Ashe Schow of the Daily Wire points out: “NBC had all this but didn’t report it at the time, before Kavanaugh’s was confirmed. I wonder why.”

Kavanaugh was confirmed Oct. 6, and NBC News had known since Oct. 4 that the corroborating affidavit supplied by Avenatti was contradicted by the woman who signed it, yet they sat on this evidence — clearly indicating that Avenatti was engaged in deception — for three weeks. NBC thereby became complicit in this deception.

Claiming that a man nominated for the Supreme Court had once engaged in a criminal conspiracy to gang-rape teenage girls is not trivial and if, as now seems probable, Michael Avenatti deliberately created this false narrative, Avenatti has committed a very serious crime. Didn’t NBC News have an obligation to report the evidence it had obtained that indicated Avenatti was engaged in a criminal effort to deceive the Senate?

NBC News promoted Julie Swetnick’s claims against Kavanaugh in an “exclusive” interview five days before the Senate voted. How can they excuse the irresponsibility of giving credibility to Avenatti’s client in this way, and then not following up when they learned that Avenatti’s other client was unwilling to stand by her affidavit? If you want to know why Americans don’t trust the news media, this is it.



 

 

Category: MSNBC, NBC, Senate, Supreme Court

Comments

Comments are closed.