Reporters behind Kavanaugh smear story claim NY Times editors cut vital exculpatory information from initial report

The New York Times reporters who wrote the smear article on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed in an interview Monday that it was not their fault that exculpatory information was withheld from the article.

Reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly told MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell their editors were responsible for the significant factual omission.

"In your draft of the article, did it include those words that have since been added to the article?" O'Donnell asked.

"It did," the reporters responded.

Pogrebin then explained the editors cut the alleged victim's name from the story per the newspaper's internal guidelines. But that does not explain why the key detail — that the alleged victim does not remember the incident — was also cut.

"So I think in this case the editors felt like it was maybe probably better to remove [the alleged victim's name], and in removing her name, they removed the other reference to the fact that she didn't remember [the alleged incident]," Progrebin said.

"So I think it was just sort of an editing, you know, done in the haste in the editing process," she added.

The article was adapted from a forthcoming book the two reporters wrote about the Kavanaugh saga. Controversy over the article erupted Sunday after the Federalist's Mollie Hemingway, who had obtained an advance copy of the book, highlighted the glaring omission on social media.

The Times was later forced to correct the story to add the exculpatory information, which undercut the core premise of the new allegation.

Still, though, the reporters have not ceased pushing the unsubstantiated allegation.

On CNN Tuesday, Progrebin claimed the new victim does not remember the incident — which allegedly happened while Kavanaugh was a student at Yale — because she was drunk. However, Progrebin was purely speculating because the alleged victim did not speak with her."