Brett Kavanaugh started off shouting. He’d prepared a blistering defence of his character and a scathing rebuke of the “national disgrace” of his Supreme Court confirmation process.

A New York Times journalist offered a mea culpa of sorts to an author whom his reporting had implicated in the sexual assault allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

In October 2018, the beneficiary was Brett M. Kavanaugh. Then-President Trump and a Senate Republican majority directed the FBI to investigate sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court ...