When the poison pen letter allegedly hiding in plain sight on Feinstein’s desk since early summer surfaced, the intended effect of all hell breaking loose seemed to be achieved. Allahpundit looked at all of the information available at the time and found it to be rather thinly sourced at best, with plenty of character testimony from others who knew the judge in high school. This one, in particular, seemed to be pertinent because if the girls in his class knew of any accusations about him it would have been some hot gossip to be sure.

I knew Brett Kavanaugh in high school. We graduated same year. I never heard anything untoward about him.

— virginiahume (@virginiahume) September 13, 2018

But the real selling point came when the other evil-doer in the story was revealed (unlike the accuser). He was identified as Mark Judge and he’s somehow been pinned as the second boy in the room where the incident allegedly took place. Unfortunately, as we’ll get to in a moment, there are some disturbing elements to his part in the tale. First, this from the Weekly Standard.

The Kavanaugh classmate quoted in the New Yorker is Mark Judge, a writer in Washington, D.C. Judge spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Friday afternoon, strongly denying that any such incident ever occurred. “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way,” Judge told TWS.

Judge says he first learned he was named in the letter during an interview with the New Yorker. “[Ronan Farrow] said: As you know, you’re named in the letter. And I did not know,” he said.

The Kavanaugh classmate told TWS that the New Yorker did not provide him the name of the woman alleging wrongdoing, a specific date of the alleged incident, or the location where the incident is alleged to have occurred. The woman alleging misconduct has requested that her identity be protected, according to media reports.

As to the little we know at this point (or at least what can be confirmed to a reasonable degree of likelihood), Mike Judge seems to be the keystone in this story arc. If the accuser’s tale is true, then there were two boys in the room when she was supposedly held down, had her mouth covered and subjected to an attempt to undress her. Kavanaugh is the one being accused, but Judge was supposedly cheering him on and “jumping on top of” Kavanaugh while he was doing it.

The first hiccup came with Judge’s initial response after he was notified that he was alleged to be the second boy in the room. His first answer was to say that he had “no recollection” of such an event. Sadly, that set of alarm bells for a number of folks in the media, because it’s the same line politicians are told to use by their attorneys during questioning. Judge’s statement to the Weekly Standard was far more forceful, saying “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”

If he’d said that to the New York Times (assuming they printed it) he could have moved the ball considerably further downfield.

The second question is how Judge was specifically called out as Suspect Number Two in the first place. I’ve seen some misfires from commentators on social media in the past 24 hours implying that Judge himself came forward. It’s not true (because Ronan Farrow is the one who contacted him and told him he’d been named), but the odor of the question is lingering out there. The obvious liberal rebuttal is, If it never happened, how did you know there was an assault to begin with!?!?

Judge can cover up that hiccup by reminding them that he only spoke after he was informed by Farrow, but hysterical Democrats are already labeling Kavanaugh an “attempted rapist” and demanding the vote on his confirmation be delayed until after the midterms anyway. The problem is that if you allow the perception to stand that there was “an incident” to begin with (which Kavanaugh flatly denies, Judge has since clarified as being fiction and no other person seems to have any memory of), then you’ve basically agreed that something happened. And if “something happened” then it comes down to he said, he said, she said and Kavanaugh’s detractors are arguing over a matter of degrees rather than the veracity of the letter.

If something did happen to this anonymous woman when she was a schoolgirl then that needs to be made right. Thus far we’ve been given nothing to suggest that there’s any meat on this bone, however. And delaying Kavanaugh’s confirmation until after the midterms (which is all the Democrats want at this point in case they take control of the Senate) needs to be based on far, far more than this.