Openly Anti-Kavanaugh NYT Writer Reported Ice Throwing Incident

Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, declared her opposition to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination in July, months before reporting that the nominee threw ice in a man’s face during an altercation at a bar during his time as a Yale undergraduate.

“The incident, which occurred in September 1985 during Mr. Kavanaugh’s junior year, resulted in Mr. Kavanaugh and four other men being questioned by the New Haven Police Department,” read the Monday report, which Bazelon co-authored.“Mr. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Mr. Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him ‘for some unknown reason.’”

Bazelon, a graduate of Yale Law School, distanced herself from the school’s endorsement of Kavanaugh just days after his nomination was announced.

https://twitter.com/emilybazelon/status/1016526195826024448

The altercation reportedly occurred after Kavanaugh and his friends mistook a fellow bar patron for the lead singer of a band they had just seen in concert. When the man angrily told the undergraduates to stop looking at him, Kavanaugh responded by throwing his drink in the man’s face. Kavanaugh’s friend, Chris Dudley, hit the man in the face with a glass, causing him to bleed from the ear.

Chad Ludington, a former Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s, first described the incident in a statement released Sunday, which accused Kavanaugh of misleading lawmakers about his drinking.

“On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face,” Ludington said.

Update 1:32p.m.: The New York Times released a statement Tuesday afternoon conceding that they should have assigned a newsroom reporter to the story.