HANNA ROSIN: The Washington Post Inches Closer to Calling the UVA Gang Rape Story a Fabrication.

Jackie has now given her friends two different names for the man she was with that night. Neither of them was in fact with her, ever dated her, or even knew her all that well. She appears to have invented a suitor, complete with fake text messages and a fake photo, which suggests a capacity for somewhat elaborate deception. Jackie, though, has not recanted her story. Her attorney would not answer questions for the Post’s story on Wednesday and has told reporters to stop contacting Jackie.

Here’s the most disturbing journalistic detail to emerge from the Post’s reporting: In the Rolling Stone story, Erdely says that she contacted Randall, but he declined to be interviewed, “citing his loyalty to his own frat.” Randall told the Post he was never contacted by Erdely and would have been happy to be interviewed.

That could mean one of two things: Jackie could have given Erdely fake contact information for Randall and then posed as Randall herself, sending the reporter that email in which he supposedly declined to participate in the story. Erdely also could have lied about trying to contact Randall. Rolling Stone might have hinted at this possibility in its “Note to Our Readers” when it referred to a “friend of Jackie’s (who we were told would not speak to Rolling Stone)” but later spoke to the Washington Post. That would take Erdely a big step beyond just being gullible and failing to check her facts, moving this piece in the direction of active wrongdoing.

People on Twitter are imagining all sorts of scenarios that might be true, but at this point, Occam’s Razor suggests that the whole thing was a hoax. Sure, it’s possible that Jackie was making up all sorts of stuff, but was then actually raped, and then subsequently changed her story many, many times. But at this point, all we know for sure is that everything she specifically told anyone seems to have turned out to be either clearly false, or extremely questionable — and mostly the former.