Why I’m Submitting to a Glossy Magazine Profile

A writer at a glossy local magazine recently asked me for an interview. It would be for an “in-depth” profile.

I said yes. A magazine profile can go sideways, as was the case when Vanity Fair came after me in 2018. Still, the journalist who called is a good one, liberal but not crazy. She’s written for The Atlantic, Washington Post, even Oprah magazine. She knows my story and probably understands how paranoid I am about the press.

One of the reasons I agreed is that, despite critics accusing me of writing about the topic too much, I still have unanswered questions about the events that briefly made me famous several years ago. The story would be about my involvement in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing.

I’ve written about the Kavanaugh nightmare a lot in the last few years, including my book The Devil’s Triangle. The main misconception about why I wrote the book and continue to write about the events of 2018 is that I’m relieving some trauma that I can’t let go of—or that I’m a narcissist. This is false. I continue because there was a sinister and illegal plot to take Kavanaugh and me down, and that it involves people high up in the media and government. I still want some answers. Those who tell me to stop looking know nothing about journalism.

My reporting was validated recently when David Enrich, an investigative reporter for The New York Times who wrote about the story in 2018, apologized to me. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my role in the Kavanaugh coverage,” Enrich told me after I confronted him, “and I would be happy to talk to you about it at some point. For now, I will just say that I have learned some lessons and would probably do certain things differently next time.” Then he texted me this: “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to go thru that.” The Times then issued its official response: ”Mr. Judge's claims about our reporters' practices are not accurate. The Times's reporting on Justice Kavanaugh's nomination and confirmation process was thorough, independent and fair, and we stand behind it.”

Enrich’s comments came after I was interviewed by Martha MacCallum for the documentary, Judge and the Justice, on Fox Nation. Kathleen Parker, at the Washington Post, also wrote a column defending me. I also reviewed Christine Blasé Ford’s book One Way Back, raising questions that the media have ignored. So this isn’t about me seeking attention or reliving trauma.

For example, I’d like to know more about Monica McLean, a figure who’s escaped all media scrutiny. McLean’s a former FBI agent who was in the news in 2018. She was Christine Blasey Ford’s best friend going back to fifth grade, was by Blasey Ford’s side at the Kavanaugh hearing, and was anonymous until an ex-boyfriend of Ford’s claimed that Ford had helped McLean prepare for her FBI polygraph test. The man who says he dated Ford in the mid-1990s, wrote that he “witnessed Dr. Ford help Monica McLean prepare for a polygraph examination.” McLean was outraged: “I have never had anyone assist me with the preparation of any polygraph. Ever. Not my entry polygraph, not my 5-year reinvestigation polygraphs. Never. I am extremely angry he would make this up,” she told CNN.

McLean was also accused of witness tampering when a woman named Leland Keyser, who Ford said was at the party where she was assaulted, denied the story—or even knowing Brett Kavanaugh. There were text messages from McLean to Keyser asking Keyser to change her story, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. McLean’s lawyer David Laufman issued a statement: “Any notion or claim that Ms. McLean pressured Leland Keyser to alter Ms. Keyser’s account of what she recalled concerning the alleged incident between Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh is absolutely false.”

Who’s David Laufman. McLean’s attorney? In short, he’s pure Deep State. Laufman is the former Justice Department lawyer who interviewed Hillary Clinton during the investigation into her private email server. That interview was conducted alongside former FBI agent Peter Strzok during the 2016 presidential election. Strzok was fired in 2018 after texts emerged from 2016 between him and his FBI co-worker and paramour, Lisa Page—texts expressed anti-Trump bias. In 2022, after the questionable FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Laufman spent a lot of time on Twitter and cable news calling for Trump’s head. In 2018 Senate aid Mike Davis tweeted this: “David Laufman also represented Monica McLean, who allegedly pressured Leland Keyser to change her statement and falsely corroborate Christine Blasey Ford’s (bogus) allegations against Kavanaugh. David Laufman seems to pop up like Forrest Gump in this ongoing Democrat lawfare.”

Monica McLean was one of the “beach friends” Blasey Ford mentioned when asked who helped her prepare her explosive 2018 letter accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Shortly after Kavanaugh was nominated, McLean cut off all ties with Ford and went silent. The people I’ve spoken to who know Ford and McLean all expressed shock that McLean will no longer speak to Ford. In her “memoir” One Way Back, Blasey Ford refers to McLean as “Tory” and briefly notes that Tory will not return her messages. Why?

There’s more. For the entire summer of 2018 Ford had been working with an opposition researcher named Keith Koegler. According to The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, written by New York Times reporters Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin, Koegler had “spent many hours that summer 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.”

I’d like to know more about this, but no reporter so far has asked.

Aside from McLean, Laufman and Koegler, there’s also the crazy stuff that happened to me. On September 24, 2018, I got a sinister phone message from a California number. A reptilian voice on the other end told me I was about to be messed with (the caller used more colorful language), and then abruptly shifted to a slightly softer tone: “Hey, give me a call. We’ll work something out.” This was flat-out extortion, witness-tampering, Mafia-style strong-arming.

When I spoke to the reporter doing the piece, she laid out what we both know are the ground rules. Nasty things could be said about me. Things I’m convinced are true might not be, I can’t tell her what to write. Still, perhaps I can at least get on the record questions I think any good journalist would want answered. Finally.