Cristina King Miranda, who posted on Facebook Tuesday that she’d heard rumors of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged attack on a classmate, was already backtracking on her claims Wednesday morning. By Wednesday night, she’d deleted her social media profiles.
Thursday morning, in an interview with National Public Radio, Miranda admitted that although she felt “empowered” to tell her story suggesting firsthand, contemporaneous knowledge of the alleged assault, but as far as whether the alleged assault actually occurred, well, Miranda says, “That it happened or not, I have no idea.”
“That it happened or not, I have no idea,” Miranda told NPR. “I can’t say that it did or didn’t.”
That’s in stark contrast to Miranda’s statements on social media, where she emphatically claimed, “The incident DID happen, many of us heard about it in school.”
Miranda later removed the post, explaining cryptically that the post “served its purpose,” and that she “was not ready” for the media attention the post garnered — even though NBC News and other outlets reported Miranda’s claims as a major break in the Kavanaugh story.
When asked why she bothered to post the claim in the first place, Miranda answered that she was “empowered.”
“In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen],” Miranda said. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”
That’s a little confusing. Miranda probably wasn’t approached or “empowered” by any specific individual to author the tweet, so it’s likely she just felt the need to inject herself into the national conversation without any real reason why she should.
NBC News, which first (and breathlessly) reported on Miranda’s claims, has now updated their story about her tweet, adding her NPR denial, but the update doesn’t come, of course, until the fifth paragraph.