Brett Kavanaugh Regrets Some Choices in High School, but Again Denies Sexual Assault
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied allegations that he behaved inappropriately toward women. Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday that although he sometimes drank too much and “was not perfect” in high school, he adamantly denies the allegations that he sexually assaulted a fellow student at a party in the 1980s.
“I drank beer with my friends, usually on weekends. Sometimes I had too many. In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,” Mr. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, will tell the committee, according to prepared remarks released by the committee on Wednesday. “But that’s not why we are here today. What I’ve been accused of is far more serious than juvenile misbehavior.”
He then reiterated that “I never did anything remotely resembling” what the woman, Christine Blasey Ford, describes.
[Read Judge Kavanaugh’s written testimony.]
Mr. Kavanaugh will appear before the committee on Thursday after Dr. Blasey, a research psychologist in California, in an attempt to save what once looked like a sure confirmation to the Supreme Court. He has denied the charges against him since Dr. Blasey’s story first became public this month, but his written testimony suggested that the tone of his defense may be shifting to acknowledge his own
Mr. Kavanaugh will condemn sexual assault as “morally wrong” and contrary to his Catholic values. But he will dismiss accusations by Dr. Blasey and two other women that have emerged in recent days as “last-minute smears, pure and simple” meant to block his confirmation to the court.
“I am not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time,” he plans to say. “But I have never done that to her or to anyone.”
Further clouding Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing the adult film actress who claims to have had an affair with Mr. Trump, released a declaration from another client, Julie Swetnick, who said that in the 1980s, she witnessed Judge Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, trying to get teenage girls “inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”
[Read about Julie Swetnick’s allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.]
In a statement released by the White House, Judge Kavanaugh said there was no truth to the claim.
“This is ridiculous and from the ‘Twilight Zone,’” he said. “I don’t know who this is and this never happened.”
Sidestepping the accusations themselves, Mr. Trump dismissed Mr. Avenatti on Twitter as a “third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations” and is seeking attention.
Judiciary Committee aides confirmed that they are examining Ms. Swetnick’s declaration, again raising questions about the nominee’s high school days. But the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, made clear to reporters that he did not expect to find anything.
“We have had accusation after accusation, accusation, very few of them, if any, corroborated,” he said.
Mr. Kavanaugh’s testimony was made public along with calendar pages from the summer of 1982 on Wednesday that paint an image of a party-hopping Brett Kavanaugh in high school, complicating his self-drawn portrait of a diligent student obsessed mainly with sports and reaching the top of his class.
At the same time, lawyers for Dr. Blasey gave the committee four affidavits — one from Dr. Blasey’s husband and three from friends — stating that she had told them in recent years that Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted her in high school.
Released as both sides prepare for an extraordinary public hearing before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, neither disclosure proves or disproves the cases that Dr. Blasey or Judge Kavanaugh have sought to advance, but Democratic senators are likely to use the calendars to question how truthful Judge Kavanaugh has been about his younger days. And although the affidavits suggest that Dr. Blasey’s story has been consistent, Republicans are more likely to focus on the lack of contemporaneous evidence that could corroborate her story.
Judge Kavanaugh intended to use the calendar, a green 1982 Northwestern Mutual Audubon wall calendar, as a part of his defense that he did not assault Dr. Blasey nor had any memory or record of a party like the one she described. No such entry exists to note a gathering that summer that exactly corresponds with Dr. Blasey’s memory.
But the calendars from May, June, July and August do contain notations that could be seen as helpful to her. He did “go to Judge’s,” an apparent reference to Mr. Judge, the friend of Judge Kavanaugh’s whom Dr. Blasey identified as participating in the assault. On July 1, 1982, he was to go to a friend’s house for “skis” with Mr. Judge and “P.J.” — possibly “brewskis” with Patrick J. Smyth, a classmate of Judge Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Preparatory School, identified by Dr. Blasey as P.J., another student attending the gathering where she says she was assaulted.
The calendar pages are full of social appointments, academic requirements, lots of trips to the beach and more mundane college visits and doctors appointments.
“BEACH WEEK” he wrote in early June.
“Go to Rehoboth w/Sam, Tom, Mark and Donny,” reads another.
There are multiple parties, multiple sporting events, and a couple of nights where Mr. Kavanaugh notes that he was grounded. At others, he travels to visit his grandmother in Connecticut and to spend the weekend with his parents in New York. He also appears to have spent considerable time at Washington-area country clubs, including the one where Dr. Blasey said a small group of teens congregated on the evening that she was assaulted.
Many of those notations are not unusual for a teenage boy, but Judge Kavanaugh, in his self-defense, has taken a stand that has been uncompromising in his portrayal of his teenage years as an innocent, sports-obsessed student.
Sign Up for On Politics With Lisa Lerer
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
Dr. Blasey has said that she did not tell anyone about the assault at the time out of fear that she might get in trouble. But the affidavits, all signed this week, suggest that Dr. Blasey had told some of the people closest to her, including her husband, about the episode at various points in recent years.
Russell Ford, Dr. Blasey’s husband, said that his wife shared the details of the assault in a 2012 couple’s therapy session.
“She said that she had been trapped in a room and physically restrained by one boy who was molesting her while the other boy watched,” he said.
The details are consistent with the account that Dr. Blasey shared with a Democratic senator this summer and The Washington Post earlier this month. Mr. Ford said that his wife mentioned Judge Kavanaugh’s name again in 2017, when Mr. Trump announced Justice Neil M. Gorsuch would be his nominee for the court.
Dr. Blasey has said that her therapist took notes during the session. Republicans complained on Wednesday that those notes were not among her submission to the committee. Dr. Blasey has also yet to turn over the results of a polygraph test administered this summer. She presented both as corroborating evidence to The Washington Post in the interview.
In another affidavit, Keith Koegler, one close friend, says that Dr. Blasey mentioned the assault to him in the summer of 2016, around the time that the news was awash with the story of a Stanford student, Brock Turner, who raped an unconscious woman. Dr. Blasey told him that she had been assaulted by a man who was now a federal judge.
Shortly after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his retirement from the court in July, Dr. Blasey wrote an email to Mr. Koegler saying that her assailant was a “favorite for SCOTUS,” short for Supreme Court of the United States. When Mr. Koegler inquired who, she said it was Brett Kavanaugh.
Another friend, Adela Gildo-Mazzon, recounted a 2013 meal with Dr. Blasey at a Mountain View, Calif., pizzeria in which she grew “visibly upset.” When Ms. Gildo-Mazzon asked her what was wrong, Dr. Blasey said she had been having a hard day, thinking about being assaulted years before.
“She said that she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge,” Ms. Gildo-Mazzon stated. “She told me she had been trapped in a room with two drunken guys, and then she escaped, ran away, and hid.”
