Kavanaugh ally tweeted theory of another attacker

By Robert Costa and Elise Viebeck / The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — A conservative legal commentator and former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia on Friday denied communicating with the White House or Judge Brett Kavanaugh about his theory that the woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault while they were teenagers was mistaking him for someone else.

Ed Whelan, in a brief interview with The Washington Post, declined to answer further questions about his tweets or views on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination process, which has been upended by the allegation of an assault decades ago.

“I have not communicated at all with [White House counsel] Don McGahn or anyone at the White House, or Judge Kavanaugh, about the topic of the Twitter thread,” Whelan said when reached by phone.

Whelan’s comment follows his apology on Twitter on Friday morning for naming a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s and suggesting the man could be responsible for the assault Ford alleges.

“I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Prep classmate,” Whelan wrote at 8:38 a.m.

“I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake,” he wrote.

Whelan, who is president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor to National Review Online, suggested Thursday in now-deleted tweets that he had identified a possible location for the house party in suburban Maryland where Ford said she was assaulted. He posted floor plans and online photographs of a home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, as well as photographs of the Kavanaugh classmate he suggested could have been responsible.

Ford dismissed Whelan’s theory in a statement late Thursday: “I knew them both, and socialized with” the other classmate, Ford said, adding that she had once visited him in the hospital. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”