A Stanford law student who says that he or she was “a driving force behind the protest” of Judge Kyle Duncan’s recent event at Stanford law school has sent a bizarre email to the Stanford law school community that essentially accuses Stanford Federalist Society president Tim Rosenberger and Judge Duncan of inventing their account that one protester screamed at Judge Duncan, “We hope your daughters get raped!”
In order that the protest leader (whom I will call Smith) not be targeted with abuse, I have redacted identifying information from Smith’s email. But I will briefly point out the illogic, arrogance, and snideness of Smith’s claim.
Smith purports “to set the record straight” that “none of our protesters shouted, ‘We hope your daughters get raped,’ or anything similar.” According to Smith: “Any shout that was loud enough to be heard over the chanting would have been heard by multiple people aside from the judge and the FedSoc president.”
It’s quite something that Smith imagines that amidst the din of the protest someone very near Rosenberger and Duncan couldn’t have yelled something that wasn’t “heard by multiple people.” It’s also quite something that Smith evidently imagines that the protester who yelled the ugly threat and any other protester who heard it would have volunteered that information by now.
Here’s another patently feeble claim by Smith: “Judge Duncan had two federal marshals available to him. If someone had shouted something so incendiary, he would not have continued along his way without doing anything to acknowledge or address the comment.”
Smith sinks even lower. By Smith’s account, Judge Duncan’s failure to mention the rape epithet before he published his Wall Street Journal op-ed is strong evidence that he is making it up. But Duncan, before publishing the op-ed, also did not recount plenty of other nasty things that were said to him (“You suck!,” “We hate you”). Indeed, I don’t think he’s ever quoted the vulgar message on a sign. By Smith’s illogic, we are supposed to believe that none of those things happened.
As Smith notes, Rosenberger recited the rape shout on the Megyn Kelly Show on Monday, March 13, as one example of the many “particularly vile things” that protesters were yelling at Duncan. Rosenberger has today confirmed to me that he “is confident in what [he] heard.”
In short, there is no reason to credit Smith’s contorted and implausible denial.