The implosion of the New York Times’ latest fake news smear of Brett Kavanaugh marches on with the revelation the news desk wanted no part of this humiliating hoax.

On Saturday, in an obvious effort to fuel the left’s #ImpeachKavanaugh movement, the far-left Times published a story (I don’t link fake news) loaded with at least six breathtaking lies.

The fake story is based on Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly’s upcoming Kavanaugh book (which I will not promote with a link or title) that has imploded in spectacular fashion over the last few days.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the lies, including the bizarre one about how it can be fun to have a penis thrust in your face at a party:

1) Seven people back up Democrat-activist Deborah Ramirez’s assault claim against Kavanaugh — This is a lie.

2) A new Kavanaugh victim has been found — This is a lie.

3) A source for this “new victim” is Max Stier, a non-partisan, much respected mover and shaker in D.C. — This is a lie.

4) The new victim’s assault allegation has been “corroborated” — This is a lie.

5) It can be fun to have a penis thrust in your face at a party — Whuh?

6) A lie of omission in not featuring the true scoop from their upcoming book, the one where we learn that a close friend of Kavanaugh-accuser Christine Blasey Ford (whose story has been completely debunked) said she has no confidence in Ford’s story. This friend is Leland Keyser, the woman Ford named as a witness.

Anyway, what we are now learning is that the news side of the Times looked at Saturday’s story and wanted no part of it. Obviously, they knew the story wasn’t there, that it was partisan bullshit built on wishful thinking and no facts.

Now, if the New York Times were a real newspaper, that would have been the end of it, but since the Times is a lying, left-wing rag, the decision was made to feature the story prominently in the opinion/analysis section, even though it claimed to break all kinds of news (see the list of six lies above).

Here’s the skinny courtesy of the far-left Vanity Fair:

Why did the Kavanaugh excerpt end up in the Review? People familiar with how things went down told me that Kelly and Pogrebin initially pitched their scoop to the news side, but the top editors ultimately felt that there wasn’t enough juice to warrant a story there, let alone a big page-one treatment (the type many lefties would have been salivating for). Instead, Pogrebin and Kelly were told that they could pitch the Review, which is entirely independent of the News department. I asked for clarification as to what about the story wasn’t News-pages-worthy, but the Times declined to comment, as did Kelly and Pogrebin. (A Times spokesperson did, however, point out that “it’s not unusual for Opinion or Sunday Review pieces to break news.”)

And as someone pointed out to Vanity Fair, even though the Times published the hoax under “analysis,” the Times knew the reader would not know the difference, would see it as news, in no small part because the Times played it up like a major news story:

Similarly, in the words of a former high-ranking Times figure, “In today’s journalistic world, the conversation is a bit irrelevant, because for most of the people who read the New York Times online or on their phones, it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Your average reader is not gonna really know or care where it is. They played it up pretty big, and I have to tell you: When I first read it, I had no idea it was in the Review. I tapped on a link, and at the top it said ‘News Analysis.’ And I also didn’t know it was a book adaptation, because I didn’t even get to the end. I get the point of view of the activists. They want the Times to further their agenda, but that’s not the Times’ job.”

So, according to Vanity Fair, the two hoaxstresses, Pogrebin and Kelly, wanted this to be a major, front page NEWS story. But the news division knew it was, at the very least, shaky. But to deceive the public, the Times not only went ahead and published a story filled with gobsmacking deceptions, a story that, in a sane world, would be fully retracted before everyone involved was fired, the Times also deceived its readers by bouncing it over to the opinion/analysis section while playing it up as BIG NEWS.

What’s more, the same Pogrebin and Kelly who lobbied to have their fake news published as news-news, are now running around distancing themselves from the Times’ decision to publish it.

Meanwhile, the only person in this mess who has never had to retract, dissemble, correct, alter, backtrack, revise, clarify, or further explain his remarks is Brett Kavanaugh, whose denials have never been contradicted by the facts, and who has a multitude of witnesses who back him up.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.