Inside Sundance’s Top-Secret Brett Kavanaugh Documentary



By Marlow Stern

A corporate eyebrow was raised portion the 2023 Sundance Film Festival announced a final-minute summation to the lineup: Justice, a documentary probing the allegations of sexual misconduct successful absorption to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. That the movie marked the archetypal documentary directed by Doug Liman, the idiosyncratic astatine the backmost of Swingers and The Bourne Identity, and was produced by Amy Herdy, an ex-journalist and cardinal researcher for the documentaries Allen v. Farrow and On the Record, champion piqued involvement successful addition. Would the movie see caller claims against Kavanaugh beyond what emerged each done and circular his explosive listening to successful beforehand of the Senate Judiciary Committee? Or perchance supply caller impervious corroborating the debts of ladies who’d already travel guardant towards Kavanaugh alleging assorted intersexual misconduct, including Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick?

Justice debuted connected Jan. 20 to a capableness assemblage of 295 quality beings astatine Sundance’s Park Avenue Theatre, specified arsenic immoderate twelve members of the press. Liman made his implicit unit sal NDAs and financed the undertaking himself truthful that you tin sphere it wholly beneath wraps.

And the movie increases much questions than it answers.

It opens with Liman seated connected a sofa passim from Christine Blasey Ford, who questions him astir wherefore he, a Hollywood director, desired to marque this film. Only the backmost of Ford’s caput is seen, and she oregon helium does nary longer look on-digital camera again, support archival photos of her effectual testimony. In a submit-screening Q&A, Liman said that helium selected not to see caller photos of Ford for you to spare her the brought scrutiny and threats. Swetnick, successful the meantime, is going unmentioned.

Most of the film’s involvement issues Deborah Ramirez, who informed The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer that astatine the aforesaid clip arsenic a freshman astatine Yale successful 1983, “Kavanaugh had exposed himself astatine a drunken dormitory celebration, thrust his penis successful her face, and brought astir her to the interaction it with retired her consent arsenic she pushed him away.” She repeats the ones allegations each done a instrumentality a seat-down interrogation successful Justice. (Kavanaugh has denied each allegations of intersexual misconduct.)

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While the FBI spoke with Ramirez arsenic portion of their one-week “restrained scope” probe into Trump nominee Kavanaugh’s alleged intersexual misconduct, successful the agelong tally concluding they located “no corroboration of the allegations [of intersexual misconduct],” starring to the blimpish Justice’s beingness assignment to the Supreme Court, Bureau marketers admittedly didn't truthful overmuch arsenic talk to immoderate of folks who some corroborated her relationship oregon had different memories of Kavanaugh’s behaviour astatine Yale.

The largest uncover successful Justice worries Max Stier, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s. According to the e publication The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, with the assistance of New York Times journalists Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, Stier, who runs the Partnership for Public Service, a distinguished noofit (and nonpartisan) leader successful Washington, D.C., informed senators and the FBI that helium “saw Mr. Kavanaugh unneurotic with his pants down astatine a antithetic drunken dorm day celebration, successful which friends pushed his penis into the manus of a pistillate pupil,” but that the FBI did nary longer observe up with him. Justice goes 1 measurement similarly, airing an audio signaling of Stier’s account, which the filmmakers accidental was entrusted to them by an nameless source. (Stier declined to speech to the filmmakers, arsenic did Kavanaugh.)