Dirty, Brett Kavanaugh the Secret Source ...

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-28-2020

Brett Kavanaugh was a secret source to Bob Woodward while working as a lawyer in Ken Starr’s 1999 investigation:

New York Times reporter Ben Smith revealed a bombshell in a puff piece about the Washington Post on Sunday.
While President Donald Trump has railed against anonymous sources, it appears his own Supreme Court judge used to be one.

According to the report, writers at the Post can look at upcoming stories by looking at the back end of their content management system.
“And at the height of the furor over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018, some who did saw a shocking article awaiting publication,” wrote Smith.

“In the article, Bob Woodward, the Post legend who protected the identity of his Watergate source, Deep Throat, for 30 years, was going to unmask one of his own confidential sources.
He was, in particular, going to disclose that Judge Kavanaugh had been an anonymous source in his 1999 book Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate,” said the report.

Woodward wanted to expose Kavanaugh because he had publicly claimed,
“in a huffy letter in 1999 to The Post,” that he wasn’t a source for Woodward in 1999. According to the claim, Kavanaugh gave Woodward juicy details about Ken Starr’s investigation behind the scenes while serving as a lawyer on Starr’s team.

It was executive editor Martin Baron who stopped it, insisting that Woodward uphold his agreement.

“The article, described by two Post journalists who read it, would have been explosive, arriving as the nominee battled a decades-old sexual assault allegation and was fighting to prove his integrity,” reported Smith.

It’s safe to say that given Trump’s hatred for leakers if Woodward had outed Kavanaugh, the president may have questioned recommendations for the judge.

Woodward still has not revealed what information Kavanaugh gave about Starr and his work.

"puff piece" says it all..

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

The Wise And Powerful wrote:: "puff piece" says it all..

Kavanaugh is a disgraceful pile of shit
and there's no changing that fact.

And yet you claimed adoration for Edward Snowden, and his leaking of state secrets to the Rooskies.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

The Wise And Powerful wrote:: And yet you claimed adoration for Edward Snowden, and his leaking of state secrets to the Rooskies.

I never claimed anything about Snowden outside of;
I'd hang the traitor--

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-30-2020

Washington Post stopped Bob Woodward from outing Brett Kavanaugh as lying anonymous source:

The Washington Post stopped veteran journalist Bob Woodward from outing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as one of the sources for his 1999 book, according to New York Times media critic Ben Smith.

Woodward was set to expose Kavanaugh as an anonymous source for his book, “Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate,” which was written when Kavanaugh served as a member of independent counsel Ken Starr’s team during its investigation into former President Bill Clinton. But Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Post, stopped him from doing so, sources at the outlet told Smith.

The revelation was discovered when journalists at The Post dug into Kavanaugh’s history in the outlet’s publishing system during his 2018 Supreme Court confirmation process.

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The journalists found an article in which Woodward, who protected the identity of the Watergate source “Deep Throat” for three decades, “was going to unmask” Kavanaugh as one of the sources quoted in the book.

“Mr. Woodward was planning to expose Mr. Kavanaugh, because the judge had publicly denied — in a huffy letter in 1999 to The Post — an account about Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton that he had himself, confidentially, provided to Mr. Woodward for his book,” Smith wrote. “The article, described by two Post journalists who read it, would have been explosive, arriving as the nominee battled a decades-old sexual assault allegation and was fighting to prove his integrity.”

The article was “nearly ready” when Baron urged Woodward not to breach his arrangement with Kavanaugh to protect his identity, according to Smith. Baron and other editors “persuaded Mr. Woodward that it would be bad for The Post and ‘bad for Bob’ to disclose a source.”

The story never ran as a result.

Smith wrote on Twitter that most of his sources at The Post agreed that Baron was right to protect the source but some journalists disagreed.

“If an anonymous source publicly disputes information they provided, journalists have absolutely no obligation to uphold a deal that’s already been broken,” Slate’s Ashley Feinberg wrote.

“Bob Woodward was sitting on clear evidence that seems to show Brett Kavanaugh had a history of brazen, shameless public lying—and the Post never ran the story,” Reuters reporter Avi Ascher-Schapiro said.

It remains unclear how much the story would have influenced Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The judge faced decades-old allegations of sexual assault and questions about his impartiality during the confirmation process. He was confirmed by a 50-48 in a mostly party-line vote.

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