RONAN FARROW (CONTRIBUTING WRITER, THE NEW YORKER): It is not accurate to say that those who knew him at the time dispute this. We talked to a roommate from the time that was living with him when this alleged incident took place who said he was indeed frequently drunk, that he took part in activity that made him unsurprised by this claim, and that he found this woman credible. He's one of several people in this story who back Ms. Ramirez. And we wouldn't have run this if we didn't have a careful basis of people who had heard at the time and found her credible.
...
This is not the behavior of someone who is fabricating something.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (HOST): Let me press you on that though, because that sentence really did jump out at me when I read the article. She says at first she wasn't sure this was Kavanaugh when you first came to her last week, and then you write, “After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorneys, she did become confident that it was him.” You know, a lot of people would look at that and say --
FARROW : And George, I would say that that's extremely typical of these stories, when you are dealing with trauma, alcohol, many years in between. I think that the more cautious witnesses that I've dealt with in cases like this very frequently say, “I want to take time to decide, I want to talk to other people involved, I want to search myself and make sure that I can affirmatively stand by these claims,” in the face of what she knew would be a crucible of partisan pushback, which is what she's receiving now.
