Female left-wing activist admits she fabricated a claim about writing a graphic anonymous letter that accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
“I was angry and I sent it out.”
Days before the midterm elections, Sen. Chuck Grassley asked federal authorities to investigate another woman for making false claims against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In a letter to the Department of Justice and FBI, Grassley said a woman named Judy Munro-Leighton took responsibility for authoring an anonymous letter that made allegations that Kavanaugh and a friend raped her. After she was tracked down and interviewed by Senate investigators, however, the woman recanted and said she was not the actual author and had never met Kavanaugh.
Senate Judiciary Committee investigators concluded that she had “fabricated” her accusation, according to Grassley’s letter.
Grassley states that the woman is a left-wing activist and told investigators it was “just a ploy,” he wrote in the letter. Her full comments to investigators were not made available.
According to a report in Business Insider:
Investigators were able to find Munro-Leighton due to her “relatively unique name,” and determined she resided in Kentucky. According to their findings, they deduced that she was what they described as a “left-wing activist,” who is “decades older than Judge Kavanaugh.”
After being interviewed by investigators on Thursday, Munro-Leighton, who had never met Kavanaugh in person, “admitted, contrary to her prior claims, that she had not been sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh and was not the author of the original ‘Jane Doe’ letter,'” Grassley’s office said.
“No, no, no. I did that as a way to grab attention,” Munro-Leighton said to investigators. “I am not Jane Doe … but I did read Jane Doe’s letter. I read the transcript of the call to your Committee … I saw it online. It was news.”
Munro-Leighton, who said she called Congress multiple times to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, also admitted she “just wanted to get attention” and that her actions were “just a ploy.”
Grassley asked for federal authorities to investigate her for making false statements and obstruction.
The anonymous, undated letter Munro-Leighton referenced was received by Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California in September, and was publicly released with Kavanaugh’s testimony on the Committee’s website on September 26. The “Jane Doe” in the letter claimed that Kavanaugh and his friend “sexually assaulted and raped me in his car,” but provided no timeframe of the incident, and no return address.
The letter reads:
The current situation regarding the accusations made by Dr. Ford against Brett Kavanaugh have prompted me to write you today. I have moved on with my life since he forced himself on me as well. The times were so different, and I didn’t expect to be taken seriously, embarrass my family, be believed at all.
I was at a party with a friend. I had been drinking. She left with another boy, leaving me to find my own way home.
Kavanaugh and a friend offered me a ride home. I don’t know the other boy’s name. I was in his car to go home. His friend was behind me in the backseat. Kavanaugh kissed me forcefully. I told him I only wanted a ride home. Kavanaugh continued to grope me over my clothes, forcing his kisses on me and putting his hand under my sweater. ‘No,’ I yelled at him.
The boy in the backseat reached around, putting his hand over my mouth and holding my arm to keep me in the car. I screamed into his hand. Kavanaugh continued his forcing himself on me. He pulled up my sweater and bra exposing my breasts, and reached into my panties, inserting his fingers into my vagina.
My screams were silenced by the boy in the backseat covering my mouth and groping me as well.
Kavanaugh slapped me and told me to be quiet and forced me to perform oral sex on him. He climaxed in my mouth.
They forced me to go into the backseat and took turns raping me several times each.
They dropped me off two blocks from my home. ‘No one will believe if you tell. Be a good girl,’ he told me.
Watching what has happened to Anita Hill and Dr. Ford has me petrified to come forward in person or even provide my name. A group of white men, powerful senators who won’t believe me, will come after me.
Like Dr. Ford, I’m a teacher, I have an education, a family, a child, a home.
I have credibility. Just because something happens a long time ago, because a rape victim doesn’t want to personally come forward, does not mean something can’t be true.
Jane Doe, Oceanside, California.
The new referral letter marks the fourth known request Grassley has made of federal authorities to investigate those involved in the controversial Kavanaugh proceedings. Those confirmation proceedings were extended due to a series of sexual assault allegations surfacing dating back to when Kavanaugh was in high school and college.
Kavanaugh has vigorously denied all the allegations.
President Donald Trump raised doubts Saturday about the women who accused Justice Kavanaugh of sexual assault or misconduct.
“It was a made-up story,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Montana, amplifying an argument he made on Twitter earlier Saturday. “She made up the story. It was a lie. It was a total lie. It was fake. You know what fake means? It was fake. She lied about the story about rape — about rape, she lied. And we’re supposed to sit back and take it.”
“And by the way what about the others? When are they going to say what happened?” Trump added, referring to the other women who accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.
h/t: Snopes
