On 26 September 2018. amidst a contentious confirmations process disrupted by claims of sexual assault put forth by multiple women (most notable Dr. Christine Blasey Ford), Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee via telephone about a letter that had been sent to the office of Senator Kamala Harris of California. In the letter (which was postmarked as having been mailed from San Diego), a woman using the pseudonym "Jane Doe" and representing herself as living in Oceanside, California, accused Kavanaugh and a friend of having repeatedly raped her in a car after they offered to give her a ride home following a party:
The current situation regarding the accusations made by Dr. Ford against Brett Kavanaugh have prompted me to write you today. I have moved on with my life since he forced himself on me as well. The times were so different, and I didn't expect to be taken seriously, embarrass my family, be believed at all.
I was at a party with a friend. I had been drinking. She left with another boy, leaving me to find my own way home.
Kavanaugh and a friend offered me a ride home. I don't know the other boy's name. I was in his car to go home. His friend was behind me in the backseat. Kavanaugh kissed me forcefully. I told him I only wanted a ride home. Kavanaugh continued to grope me over my clothes, forcing his kisses on me and putting his hand under my sweater. 'No,' I yelled at him.
The boy in the backseat reached around, putting his hand over my mouth and holding my arm to keep me in the car. I screamed into his hand. Kavanaugh continued his forcing himself on me. He pulled up my sweater and bra exposing my breasts, and reached into my panties, inserting his fingers into my vagina.
My screams were silenced by the boy in the backseat covering my mouth and groping me as well.
Kavanaugh slapped me and told me to be quiet and forced me to perform oral sex on him. He climaxed in my mouth.
They forced me to go into the backseat and took turns raping me several times each.
They dropped me off two blocks from my home. 'No one will believe if you tell. Be a good girl,' he told me.
Watching what has happened to Anita Hill and Dr. Ford has me petrified to come forward in person or even provide my name. A group of white men, powerful senators who won't believe me, will come after me.
Like Dr. Ford, I'm a teacher, I have an education, a family, a child, a home.
I have credibility. Just because something happens a long time ago, because a rape victim doesn't want to personally come forward, does not mean something can't be true.
Jane Doe, Oceanside, California.
Kavanaugh's response to questions about the letter was to say: "[T]he whole thing is ridiculous. Nothing ever -- anything like that, nothing. I mean, that's -- the whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn't happen, not anything close."
Several weeks later, after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings had concluded and the full Senate had voted to confirm Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, committee chairman Senator Charles Grassley revealed in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI director Christopher Wray that a woman named Judy Munro-Leighton had sent the committee's staff an email with the subject line "I am Jane Doe from Oceanside CA -- Kavanaugh raped me" and claimed to be the author of that anonymous letter:
My name is Jane Doe, from Oceanside CA. I am sharing with you the story of the night that Brett Kavanaugh and his friend sexually assaulted and raped me in his car. Here is the letter that I sent to Sen. Kamala Harris on Sept. 19 with details of this vicious assault. The Senate Judiciary Comm had a phone interview on Sept. 26 with Kavanaugh to ask him about my letter.
I refuse to allow Donald J. Trump to use me or my story as an ugly chant at one of his Republican rallies. I know that Jane Doe will get no media attention, but I am deathly afraid of revealing any information about myself or my family. I watched in horror as Trump vilified Dr. Blasey-Ford. I will not allow this abuse to be directed toward me.
Senator Grassley noted that when investigators began looking into the background of the Judy Munro-Leighton who claimed to be the "Jane Doe" behind the accusatory letter, they found that she was considerably older than Brett Kavanaugh (and therefore unlikely to have been attending parties with him when he was a young man), and she neither lived in the Washington, D.C. area (as Kavanaugh did) nor in California (as the signature and postmark on the letter indicated):
Committee investigators began investigating Ms. Munro-Leighton’s allegations. Given her relatively unique name, Committee investigators were able to use open-source research to locate Ms. Munro-Leighton and determine that she: (1) is a left-wing activist; (2) is decades older than Judge Kavanaugh; and (3) lives in neither the Washington DC area nor California, but in Kentucky.
According to Grassley, when investigators finally managed to speak to Ms. Munro-Leighton in person, she denied that she had ever met Judge Kavanaugh or been sexually assaulted by him, and she also denied having written and sent the letter she had previously claimed credit for:
Eventually, on November 1, 2018, Committee investigators connected with Ms. Munro-Leighton by phone and spoke with her about the sexual-assault allegations against Judge Kavanaugh she had made to the Committee. Under questioning by Committee investigators, Ms. Munro-Leighton admitted, contrary to her prior claims, that she had not been sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh and was not the author of the original “Jane Doe” letter. When directly asked by Committee investigators if she was, as she had claimed, the “Jane Doe” from Oceanside California who had sent the letter to Senator Harris, she admitted: “No, no, no. I did that as a way to grab attention. I am not Jane Doe ... but I did read Jane Doe’s letter. I read the transcript of the call to your Committee ... I saw it online. It was news.”
She further confessed to Committee investigators that (1) she “just wanted to get attention”; (2) “it was a tactic”; and (3) “that was just a ploy.” She told Committee investigators that she had called Congress multiple times during the Kavanaugh hearing process -- including prior to the time Dr. Ford’s allegations surfaced -- to oppose his nomination. Regarding the false sexual-assault allegation she made via her email to the Committee, she said: “I was angry, and I sent it out.” When asked by Committee investigators whether she had ever met Judge Kavanaugh, she said: “Oh Lord, no."
It's unclear whether the Judy Munro-Leighton questioned by committee investigators actually wrote the "Jane Doe" letter sent to Senator Harris' office (as she initially claimed), or whether she falsely took credit for it later as as attention-getting ploy (as she later claimed). Either way, she made misrepresentations to the Senate Judiciary Committee, prompting Senator Grassley to call upon federal authorities to investigate the matter:
As I have repeatedly stated, Committee investigations in support of the judicial nomination process are an essential part of the Committee’s constitutional role. The Committee is grateful to citizens who come forward with relevant information in good faith, even if they are not one hundred percent sure about what they know. But when individuals intentionally mislead the Committee, they divert Committee resources during time-sensitive investigations and materially impede our work. Such acts are not only unfair; they are potentially illegal. It is illegal to make materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements to Congressional investigators. It is illegal to obstruct Committee investigations.
Accordingly, in light of the seriousness of these facts, and the threat these types of actions pose to the Committee’s ability to perform its constitutional duties, I hope you will give this referral the utmost consideration.
Munro-Leighton Referral wit... by on Scribd
So Brett Kavanaugh’s rape accuser now admits she made up the story. Media silence.