Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t think much of a New York Times report that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had been questioned in a bar fight in 1985.
In response to the report, McConnell mocked the newspaper from the Senate floor on Tuesday.
“Last night the New York Times unleashed this major story,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “Get this! Judge Kavanaugh may have been accused of throwing some ice across a college bar in the mid 1980s. Talk about a bombshell!”
In its piece for The Times, reporters Emily Bazelon and Ben Protess found that while Kavanaugh was himself never arrested, he had been accused of throwing ice on another patron, according to a police report. Kavanaugh was a junior at Yale at the time the incident took place.
Bazelon has publicly tweeted about her displeasure with Kavanaugh’s nomination, which some argued showed a bias against the Supreme Court nominee.
“I understand why the NYT would publish this story given some of Kavanaugh’s statements, but Emily should have never been assigned to it or have her byline on it,” tweeted reporter Yashar Ali. “Not a good look.”
I understand why the NYT would publish this story given some of Kavanaugh’s statements, but Emily should have never been assigned to it or have her byline on it. Not a good look. pic.twitter.com/Nvayh5ajFH
— Yashar Ali ? یاشار (@yashar) October 2, 2018
Reps for the Times did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap on McConnell, but in a statement they insisted that Bazelon’s role in the piece had been minimal and that they fully stood behind the story. The paper did concede, however, that “in retrospect, editors should have used a newsroom reporter for that assignment.”
On Friday, the FBI launched an investigation into Judge Brett Kavanaugh to determine whether a series of sexual misconduct accusations against him had merit. Kavanaugh stands accused by three women of various acts of misconduct while drunk in either high school or college. One of those accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, testified on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee to lay out her accusations in detail.
Kavanaugh also testified on the same day before the same committee, where he defiantly denied any accusation of wrongdoing in remarks that veered between hostile and weepy.