Just like the prosecutors of General Flynn and the application for FISA warrants, the New York Times left out critical exculpatory evidence when it published a character assassination piece Sunday, intended to intimidate or even impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Anyone else see a pattern here?

The article in question appeared in the Times on the day with its highest circulation and was the topic of much discussion in the national media, including ridicule from conservatives and President Trump, who urged the justice to consider a libel suit (almost impossible to win because he is a public figure).

Brett Kavanaugh should start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue. The lies being told about him are unbelievable. False Accusations without recrimination. When does it stop? They are trying to influence his opinions. Can’t let that happen! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2019

Here is the correction at the very bottom of the article that already had been very widely viewed and discussed by the time the correction appeared late at night:

Editors' Note: Sept. 15, 2019 An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book's account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party. The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.

Mollie Hemingway efficiently describes the article and its problems:

The article is ostensibly about Deborah Ramirez, a woman who had claimed in The New Yorker last year that she'd been severely inebriated at a party at Yale her freshman year when something — she was unclear on precisely what — had happened. She was on the floor when "a male student pointed a gag plastic penis in her direction," the New Yorker reported. That student and another student were nearby and then a "third male then exposed himself to her." The reader is supposed to assume this is Kavanaugh, though Ramirez is never clearly and directly quoted as saying that. Last year, the New York Times called "dozens" of people attempting to corroborate the story and came up with nothing. The New Yorker also had no corroboration for the claim, though it did quote some members of a loose anti-Kavanaugh caucus as claiming that they had heard about it. Ramirez herself had called classmates and told them she "could not be certain" that Kavanaugh was the person who exposed himself, the Times reported.

Two NYT writers, the authors of the article, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, wrote a book on Kavanaugh, in which they admitted that Ramirez did not remember the purported assault.

The authors then bring forth a new allegation that they suggest bolsters her claim. They say that a former Clinton attorney named Max Stier told the senators and F.B.I. that he witnessed Kavanaugh, pants-down, at a party where a group of guys pushed the hand of a female student onto him. What they neglected to mention, however, was that the Senate Judiciary Committee was not notified of this claim, according to counsel Mike Davis. Democratic Senate offices turned over several claims against Kavanaugh, some of them leading to criminal referrals for false statements. There were claims of a nationwide crime spree undertaken by Kavanaugh, although no evidence was found in support of any of the claims. More importantly than the procedural issue, however, is that several friends of the alleged victim in question say she has zero recollection of such incident. That salient detail was omitted by the reporters.

Evidently, until it was criticized, the New York Times did not think that the factual exculpatory information was "fit to print." The paper is rapidly destroying whatever residual reputation for integrity it once may have enjoyed. It is fully, publicly (thanks to leak of its executive editor's talk to staffers) committed to destroying President Trump and the results of his work, including his Supreme Court appointees.