Washington Post reporter Emma Brown has a new book out. It’s called To Raise a Boy: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood. It’s a guide to raising boys. But Brown knows much more about destroying human males than nurturing them. I know. I was one of her victims.

On September 16, 2018, Brown reported that Christine Blasey Ford, a psychologist in California, accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Kavanaugh had been nominated for the Supreme Court and was about to be voted out of committee. Ford claimed that he had sexually assaulted her in high school in 1982. Ford also alleged that I was in the room, and that I witnessed everything before jumping in and breaking it up.

The whole thing was a set up. And Brown played a key role in this ugly charade. On the morning of September 16, she broke Ford’s story in the Washington Post. Brown also emailed me to ask about the allegation. But her questions diverged from what was published in her Washington Post article. In one email to me, which was leaked to the media, Brown referenced a girl named Leland Keyser. She was allegedly at the party that Ford, Brett and I also supposedly attended.

The Disappearing “Witness”

In the Washington Post piece published hours later, there was no mention of Leland Keyser.

What happened? At the Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel noticed this. She asked questions. Why was there no mention of Leland Keyser in the official Post piece? Why didn’t Post reporter Emma Brown cite Keyser, who according to Ford was at the party in question?

On September 22 — almost a week later — the Post answered. From Fox News:  

Ford, The Post acknowledged in an article by reporter Emma Brown on Saturday, had told the paper more than a week ago about Keyser and said ‘she did not think Keyser would remember the party because nothing remarkable had happened there, as far as Keyser was aware.’

But The Post did not mention Keyser specifically or Ford’s preemptive dismissal of her memory in its original recounting of Ford’s allegations, a bombshell story that has threatened to upend Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation. The story mentioned only that ‘Ford named two other teenagers who she said were at the party’ and that ‘[t]hose individuals did not respond to messages on Sunday morning.’

The End of Ford’s Credibility

As Strassel put it on Twitter: Wow. Ford said Leland Keyser wouldn’t remember the party, and Brown just decided to believe her and not mention Keyser at all.

It’s not hard to see why. Keyser, it turns out, was a disaster for Ford’s credibility. In 2019 Keyser revealed to Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, two reporters for the New York Times, that she did not believe Ford’s story. Further, Keyser said she felt pressured to change her account to match the published stories. “We spoke multiple times to Keyser, who also said that she didn’t recall that get-together or any others like it,” Pogrebin and Kelly reported. “In fact, she challenged Ford’s accuracy. ‘I don’t have any confidence in the story.’”

Turning the Screws on the Woman Who Refused to Lie

Kelly and Pogrebin also note that some of Blasey Ford’s friends “had grown frustrated with Keyser. Her comments about the alleged Kavanaugh incident had been too limited, some of them felt, and did not help their friend’s case. Surely, given what a close friend Keyser had been, she could say more to substantiate Ford’s testimony and general veracity, even if she could not corroborate Ford’s more specific memories.”

A group text was formed in which people discussed how to get Keyser to bury me and Brett. At one point, an anonymous man on the text suggested that they defame Keyser as an addict. “I was told behind the scenes that certain things could be spread about me if I didn’t comply,” Keyser told reporters.

Extortion in Service of Perjury

Like Keyser, I too was pressured to lie. On September 24, 2018, a caller from California said that I was about to get messed with (the actual language was much harsher) and that I should call him back to make sure that didn’t happen. I didn’t call back.

I have no idea who made the call. I do know that the entire summer of 2018 Ford was gathering opposition research on me. As I have noted in previous articles, at the time Ford was using an opposition research named Keith Koegler. According to the book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, Koegler is

a tech industry lawyer … was a voracious reader and a technical thinker. In his second-floor home office, he’d spent many hours that summer [2018] poring over news coverage of the nomination process, biographical information about Kavanaugh, and writings and videos produced by Mark Judge. In combing through YouTube, articles, and social networks, Koegler had learned more about the house parties … and the lexicon of 1980s Georgetown Prep than he had ever thought he would care to know.

In their book She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey chart Ford’s movements in the summer of 2018. Ford aggressively courted politicians and the media with her story. On July 10, frustrated that no one was buying it, she issued an ultimatum to Brown — call me back or I will go to senators and the New York Times. “By late morning,” Kantor and Twohey write, “she was on the phone with Emma Brown, a Post reporter eager to hear her out.”

Setting a Booby Trap

A day after that conversation, Brown tried to reach me. On July 11 Brown sent me this email:

Dear Mark,

I’m a reporter at the Washington Post, and I’m reaching out to see if you have a few minutes to talk with me about Georgetown Prep. I would be grateful for your help understanding what is special about the school, and what Brett Kavanaugh was like as a classmate there. Please give me a call, or let me know how best to reach you.

Thank you!

Emma Brown

Nothing about Ford or an alleged assault. But I have some street smarts. I know to never, ever talk to the media about anything, even my shoe size. So I told Brown that I supported Brett and had nothing else to say. I knew that behind her sunny greeting Brown was wielding a shiv aimed at my back.

Moms, Keep Emma Brown Far Away from Your Sons

Two months later, Brown, the New York Times, CNN and the rest of the media launched the blitzkrieg. Everything that had been building up in the oppo research septic tank for weeks exploded into public view. Crazy tales of drugs, gang rapes, and high school yearbook slang tore through the country. The most outrageous accusers were put front and center in the media, while people like Leland Keyser were ignored.

Brown’s new book refers to the “hidden struggles of American boyhood.” One struggle some will face when they grow up is dishonorable reporters willing to slander innocent men as sex criminals.

 

Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C.