Dont think ive ever seen looked at as this fall so thanks for coming. We invite you to listen, watch and follow along on twitter. Its at press club in dc and the hashtag is an pc live. If you have questions, for the authors this evening, please there will be question cards around the room. Write the questions on the card, theyll be collected and sent out to me. And we will leave plenty of time for questions. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge our headliners team, laurie riso and Dc Media Strategies and our staff liaison Lacey Underwood who put this event together this evening. So we are delighted to have with us here tonight, rotted programming and kate kelly, the authors of the education of Brett Kavanaugh. The book is about three days old and its been three days of uproar, controversy and for both President Trump to call for the mass resignation of New York Times staffers and democrats to call for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached and the New York Times had to retract a poorly conceived to. Opinion piece published in the times included an excerpt of the book and new allegations against kavanaugh that provoked a lot of backlash when this paper revealed it had edited out a key detail that the woman behind the allegations who was a subject of the allegations had that she does not necessarily remember the attempt. Authors who done deepens the allegations of Sexual Misconduct that dogged Justice Kavanaugh during his confirmation to the Supreme Court described her account as nuanced. The Washington Post called the book a remarkable work of slowed down journalism. That merits event rather than opening on them or analyzing them. So were excited and our two authors here today to be with us this evening about the reporting and what they hope theyve achieved with the book. We welcome robin pogrebin, little bit about robin. She covers arts and cultural institutions exploring internal politics and governments of the world of auction houses and performing arts stories. Shes a yale graduate. And we will hear more about that. And she previously covered the media for the times business section and natural gas. Kate kelly to miami right covers wall street. Hes an experienced Television Broadcaster and the author of streetfighter, bestselling account of the Bank Failures that set off the financial crisis. Before joining the times she worked at the wall street journal and cnbc and she attended the National Cathedral school in washington before setting up for columbia so please join me in welcoming kate kelly and robin pogrebin. As i mentioned in my intro, a lot of the talk about your book has been centered in the last couple of days around the times so id likeus to focus more on the book. Can you just talk a little bit about what was your goal . What were you hoping to achieve inwriting this book especially so quickly after the confirmation process . I would love to answerthat question, we both would and thank you for this warm welcome. We appreciate everyone who come here to listen more about the book and look forward to everyones questions. What we wanted to do was provide alittle bit more information , perhaps a little more closure about the confirmation process so royal america a year ago. Allegations that arose of sexually misconduct, the questions that were not answered. The fbi inquiry was short and left a lot of potential information providers unaddressed. Not focused on when Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed, i think a lot of people felt unsettled andunsatisfied all around the spectrum of thinking. People who found the women to be credible found that they had not had their allegations investigated adequately. People who believe that Justice Kavanaugh was innocent of all these accusations perhaps felt he had not had his side of the story corroborated well enough or heard adequately enough. And we wanted to know who the fbi talk to the people they did talk to, what sort of information context that they get. The report generated was reviewed only by senators and key staffers in a secure location. We lived in the same freshman dorm our freshman year. And had social circles that overlap somewhat. That had kind of helped in the reporting initially in terms of reaching out to former classmates. We are both part of this team which is quite large and im sure many of you were on that story possibly as well. I dont need to remind you it was kind of this frenzy of information seeking in that moment in real time where even as these confirmation hearings were unfolding we were all scrambling to flush things out as much as possible and it was difficult to do under that time pressure when also people have a lot of stake in the outcome. I think we both really felt that it was a story for our time not just because it resonated on such a personal level with so many people it had been so incredibly polarizing but it speaks to this political culture we are in so much that we really have the sense of people saw in the story what they wanted to see. Regardless of the fact and the merits that they just people we talked to who assumed, even when we said the reason we went back back at these events in the book was to revisit them in a more thoughtful indepth detailed way with the benefit of time but did have people who i would talk to and say im writing this book theyd be like, youre going to get them right . Or people who would say, juergen finally show that this guy was railroaded. And treated terribly. So given those incredible extremes i think our outcome is that messy and between which is probably unsatisfying satisfies no one. We found these allegations credible ultimately of these women but we also kind of got to know kavanaugh a lot better which i think most of the country hasnt. We start to understand his record, 12 years on the Second Circuit and what those decisions were and then actually hes more of a roberts and disco leah and it might be helpful for people to know that were very worried about him being a right wing ideologue. That he is respected abthese are some of the counterintuitive things that we also uncovered that i think were sort of lost in the flurry to the rush to judgment originally. Was there specific things it sounds like that surprising perhaps was there anything specific that surprise you, any fact . One of the things that really he made it his mission to address that. As a result really had the highest record of hiring women. You can argue a ginsberg has acknowledged him as being the first Supreme Court justice as having four female clerks. There were people who said it was politically strategic perhaps in a time when we are all politically correct he knew it would be good to get points for that, there are others who say he was trying to free up the allegations at the time like maybe he knew this was in the offing. So he did this as an anecdote to that. Creating a good record with women. We found whatever his motivations, he did this in a real sincere way and so many women attest to the fact that he, not just hire them as clerks but stayed with them over time promoting the making sure they went to Supreme Court and really meant touring them. And and nurturing and masterful way there was this one story particularly striking someone who testified at the Heritage Foundation she talked about he was an unorthodox candidate. On the Deborah Ramirez side of things i think that was also a story that was lost in the flow where it started to feel like piling on of allegations against kavanaugh you had the Julie Swetnick allegations and the right is doing a lot with their book as off were out to get we investigate all of them to the extent we could in the last 10 months. We found the Julie Swetnick allegations didnt pan out. As Deborah Ramirez we found repeated stories of people who had heard about that in the years since he became well in advance of him coming federal judge. That was meaningful. If i could add a quick addendum to one point its interesting what you say about leave all women because i heard senator Kirsten Gillibrand you recently on the New York Times daily etiquette was talking about the notion of leave all women and what does that mean and she said it means do the investigation. Take the allegations seriously and conduct an investigation and see whats there and what may have happened or did not happen. That was very much our eat those going through this. I want to get to that fbi investigation but i want to go back a little because he mentioned he mentioned this in passing that you were in his yellow class. I was told that your culture reporter wall street reporter why are you covering this . You were starting to get calls organically when he was nominated, is that how it started . Its interesting i dont think ive ever talked about this but this is kind of good. I have a College Friend who, unlike september 14 texted me, do you remember the name Deborah Ramirez . So someone was asking her about Deborah Ramirez and i was like i dont know. She said can you send me a picture erm your your books i went to my yearbook i texted it to her and then she came back and said, do you remember tracy harmon . Another name and can you send me that picture. And i did it was because she had a friend who worked for senator who is trying to find out more about those names. September 14. Just for context come the Christine Blasey ford story came out of the Washington Post with her name on the record and all the description of the allegations on september 16. I think it was days before that im not sure the 14th a right before that that the intercept reported on the existence of a letter containing what we would later learn to be the blasey ford allegations. There were not a lot of details know at the time. Thats right. So like yalies were talking. This thing was moving around and we definitely heard that in the course of my reporting that theres this whole part in our book where we talk about there are some classmates who have this theory that brett was i should say justice cavanaugh, we called him brett. He was trying to preempt the allegations in advance. As far back as july there was some kind of communications about dont say anything bad a adont say anything bad about brett, among the people of yell . Yes. Just answer your question of how i came to the story which would seem out of the blue. I grew up here heres my hometown and was National Cathedral school class of 93 so i was in school 10 years after Justice Kavanaugh graduated from Georgetown Prep. I was part of the independent in both the Georgetown Prep singlesex school and i was familiar with the social scene at least a 10 years later i knew some people that had come to in the 80s interestingly at the time of the kavanaugh confirmation process i didnt realize i knew anyone who was an alum of Georgetown Prep. I later learned some people i knew through church or family or other connections were alums and it was one of those people who said to me, you need to look into some things here. The thing that was being shared with me was about the yearbook and the issues around the young woman named renata who was bragging about in the yearbook. By kavanaugh and some of his friends as being members of a renata club. We later learned they were sexually themed jokes and boasts about her that were not strictly true. Its a very messy story in a way because those boys at the time, men now, some of them, including i think Justice Kavanaugh, really respect this roman renata. Shes in their extended social circle, they cared about her at the time and they do now but there was sort of a cultural through line at the time based on some of the alums from the 1980s that ive talked to from prep of to use one of those peoples words casual misogyny joking about women and sometimes in a disparaging way. In the renata yearbook mentions as well as some of the talk around campus at the time about renata even if it was intended to be humorous. It was harsh and belittling. Did you speak to her . She issued a statement to the New York Times saying that she was, and paraphrasing, see essentially said she had been unaware of the meaning of those jokes back then and she found them horrible and hurtful and talks about how she hopes those folks dont treat their own daughters that way. So that was what we got from her. I spoke to some of her friends who talked a little bit about the social scene at that time and they said there was not sex acts going on between renata in these boys. It just shows that even now even so many years later can be very painful and hurtful to be talked about in that way and to think that people have a certain impression of you from high school thats erroneous. I read your essay where you describe your conclusion and one of them is that you did not find that Justice Kavanaugh had any allegations of bad behavior postcollege as far as he could find. It was a nuance conclusion. What do you come away with in terms of how we deal with past behaviors . Especially if they were one somebody was essentially a kid. This is something we wrestled with quite a bit. Particularly since we both have daughters and both have sons. The idea that something you did, lets say he did do these things, if you did them when he was 17 and 18, are they disqualifying if he has improved and been a better person and has had exemplary conduct ever sense. We didnt find anything in the last 36 years. Im not saying there might not be something out there but we didnt, we thought it was meaningful particularly since i have done up a lot of me too stories for the times. When im done then there is usually a real pattern of behavior there is one woman leads to another woman, it isnt hard to establish that this is a predator. Someone like judge kaczynski who kavanaugh worked for clicked for and became close to first it was five women or eight women and then 15. And that happens. That did not happen in this case. Then its really a difficult question for what other, how are you evaluating him and we talk to people who feel like whatever you do something in your life, even if its unacceptable behavior, before you are of age, its still acceptable forever. That means the court is not spoken to you as a job. I think there are others who feel like should we give you both a chance to get better maybe even if he had a conscious effort to address the behavior and the rest of his life. What kate and i ultimately concluded as we had to stick to what we do as journalists, which is uncover and present as many facts as we possibly could. This is a factbased book and let the readers decide for themselves. This was ultimately the president s decision, the senate, voters who then weighed in on the midterm elections, it was not for us to say whether Justice Kavanaugh deserves to be on the court. There was obviously this controversy about the allegation from a party at yale. Where the purported victim did not speak to you. People have asked why you included it in the book. My sense has been its because it was also illustrative of the scope of the fbi investigation. Can you talk about the decisionmaking including that . Im glad you asked about that. The additional allegations, just to quickly summarize it, has to do with a drunken Dormitory Party at yale in which allegedly go Young Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself and had friends pushes genitals into a classmate a female classmates hand. We had more than one source now we have two sources on that it was also in a document that was prepared for the fbi by lawyers for Christine Blasey ford a description of the incident with the womens name. He was circulating a year ago. What we found was there was a person in the room when this happened and observed it. In washington figure named max dyer. Who had some history doing work on behalf of the clintons but for many years has been a nonpartisan Good Government advocate and is a respected figure. He says that he witnessed this event and he told this to multiple senators last year as well as tried to contact the fbi and share the details of that with the fbi he tried among other things by senator chris cohen wrote a letter referring to styron saying he was someone who should be followed up with. In terms of the reporting, we have these two sources dyer has declined to discuss this publicly. The women involved, actually did talk to robin for the book but about a different subject and did not want to talk about this and i will let you say more. Friends of hers have said that she does not recall the incident and that may be because from what we understand pretty much everyone she and others at the party were intoxicated or under the influence if not intoxicated. Am i forgetting anything . I think thats right. Its really different so often people have said you dont really have you have all this hearsay about something that happened. Here you actually have something that witnessed something and saw it. And people have made a lot of his Clinton Association but actually are former editors of the time today said on fox news of all things if he will politically motivated why did he blow this up during the confirmation hearing which he didnt. From our understanding he had a very specific agenda which was to bring this inf