A reporter whose coverage was part of the smear campaign against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 reportedly has regrets about his role in what became a sensational, fabricated account of the judge’s high school life.
The reporter, David Enrich, expressed his regrets to Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh’s classmates who was falsely accused of having been present when a young Kavanaugh supposedly sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford.
Judge wrote at ChroniclesMagazine.org that Enrich’s frank response to a media query had caught him by surprise:
Enrich responded in a way that surprised me: “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my role in the Kavanaugh coverage, and I would be happy to talk to you about it at some point. For now, I will just say that I have learned some lessons and would probably do certain things differently next time.”
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Enrich seemed to be having second thoughts about his role in the Kavanaugh feeding frenzy—especially with a new book coming out. He seemed to feel that his integrity was in question and needed repair. Perhaps that’s why he tried to minimize his role in the affair by stating, “I would quibble with the statement that I covered a lot of the Kavanaugh nomination. I believe I co-wrote two articles.”
That’s true, but the two articles he did write, or to be exact co-wrote, were quite lengthy and caused a terrible amount of damage and distress to my family and friends. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to go through that,” he said. This expression of sympathy was remarkable coming from the person who had caused it, and (speaking as a former Catholic schoolboy) it made me want to give him a chance to atone for his sins, should he be inclined to confess them.
Judge recounted his experience during the Kavanaugh hearing in his own 2022 book, The Devil’s Triangle.
Regrets in journalism are rare — especially from the Times, which showed no scruples about its Pulitzer Prize-winning roles in covering the “Russia collusion” hoax or fabricating American history in the “1619 Project.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
