New York Times journalist David Enrich, who co-authored two articles about Justice Brett Kavanaugh after his nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018, has expressed some regrets about his reporting.
In 2018, Mark Judge was accused of witnessing Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault on Christine Blasey Ford in 1982 at a high school party.
Judge continues to insist he never saw Kavanaugh engage in any behavior like what was described by Ford, and Judge and the other supposed attendees named by Ford say they have no recollection of the party.
Judge told Fox News the allegations took a toll on his mental health, something he also told Enrich.
Judge said he reached out to Enrich for a response to “a question I had sent him about his newspaper’s 2018 coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh nomination,” per an article he wrote for Chronicles Magazine.
Enrich sent a response to Judge, saying, “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.”
When Judge asked Enrich to elaborate on what he would do differently, Enrich said, “This is a subject for a longer conversation that I’m not going to have over the holidays. Sorry.”
Judge claims Enrich added, “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to go thru that.”
What did Enrich report in 2018?
On Sept. 20, 2018, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein publicly released a letter Ford had addressed to her, claiming Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school, “with the assistance of his close friend, Mark G. Judge."
The New York Times article co-written by Enrich and Kate Kelly was released four days later, and included the letter’s allegations that Kavanaugh was a heavy drinker and disrespected women in high school.
The Times’ article began, "Brett Kavanaugh’s page in his high school yearbook offers a glimpse of the teenage years of the man who is now President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: lots of football, plenty of drinking, parties at the beach."
Kelly and Enrich’s subsequent article, released on Oct. 4, includes a two-page letter Kavanaugh wrote in 1983 about a beach party and included more details on Kavanaugh’s high school drinking.
A Times spokesperson told Fox News, “Mr. Judge’s claims about our reporters’ practices are not accurate. The Times’s reporting on Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination and confirmation process was thorough, independent and fair, and we stand behind it.”
Judge believes New York Times reporter 'is having an attack of conscience'
In his article, Judge wrote, “Like the rest of the media, Enrich had been sold a lie peddled by opposition researchers—one of whom, Michael Avenatti, is a psychopath and is now in jail—that while in high school Brett and I had been involved in gang rapes and drugging girls.”
When Kavanaugh responded to the allegations with reporters at Fox News, he said, “No. I had never sexually assaulted anyone, not in high school, not ever. I’ve always treated women with dignity and respect.”
In the same interview, Kavanaugh added that he never went to the described party, and “the other people who are alleged to be present have said they do not remember any such party.”
Judge commented on the articles that were released during that period in 2018. “It’s the kind of thing that even 20 years ago would never make it into the media for lack of evidence but, because there are no guardrails on the legacy media anymore, the accusations were published in all the major online and print media and aired over television and radio,” he wrote.
He added, “It also might be why David Enrich is having an attack of conscience even as he prepares to do battle with the right as a defender of journalistic integrity. I wish him luck pulling it off. But it would be more convincing if he would first come clean about what he did to Brett, to me, and to our friends.”