Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday denied new sexual misconduct allegations levied against him by a woman who said she saw efforts by Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge to get girls drunk at parties in the 1980s so that they could be assaulted.
“This is ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone,” Kavanaugh said in a statement released after the allegations surfaced. “I don’t know who this is and this never happened.”
Attorney Michael Avenatti released a sworn declaration Wednesday by his client, Julie Swetnick, who claims she saw Kavanaugh at parties touching girls without their consent and “not taking ‘No’ for an answer.”
In a tweet Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump slammed Avenatti, who also represents adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her efforts to break a non-disclosure agreement meant to bar her from talking about an affair she says she had with Trump a decade before his election.
“Avenatti is a third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations, like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh,” Trump said. “He is just looking for attention and doesn’t want people to look at his past record and relationships -- a total low-life!”
Avenatti responded to the tweet within minutes, reminding Trump that his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty last month to eight charges, including multiple counts of tax evasion and a campaign finance charge stemming from so-called “hush money” payments made to Daniels and former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal.
“You are (a) habitual liar and complete narcissist who also is a disgrace as a president and an embarrassment to our nation,” Avenatti wrote. “You are so inept that your ‘best and brightest’ are Cohen and (Trump attorney Rudy) Giuliani.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley said Avenatti has provided a copy of Swetnick’s sworn declaration to the committee and that the group’s lawyers were reviewing it Wednesday.
Swetnick said she met Kavanaugh and Judge in the early ‘80s at a house party in the Washington area. She said she saw the pair at several parties between 1981 and 1983, often drinking and engaging “in highly inappropriate conduct.”
“This conduct included the fondling and grabbing of girls without their consent,” Swetnick said in the declaration.
She said Kavanaugh often drank to excess and that she saw him “engage in abusive and physically aggressive behavior toward girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, ‘grinding’ against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts.”
“I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys,” Swetnick said. “I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”
She said that in 1982, she “became the victim of one of these 'gang' or 'train' rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present."
"Shortly after the incident, I shared what had transpired with at least two other people,” she said.
Kavanaugh's attorney, Beth Wilkinson, called Swetnick's allegations outrageous during an interview Wednesday on CNN.
“Really you witnessed gang rapes and you never said anything? You never came forward?” Wilkinson said. “I cannot imagine not coming forward when this man was named if that’s what you witnessed. I don’t understand that -- and why wouldn’t you go to police?”
Judge's lawyer, Biz Van Gelder, told The Associated Press that her client "vehemently denies the new allegations."
In written testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, ahead of a planned hearing with another one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, the Supreme Court nominee called accusations against him “last-minute smears, pure and simple.”
"There has been a frenzy to come up with something -- anything, no matter how far-fetched or odious -- that will block a vote on my nomination," Kavanaugh wrote.
He said he spent most of his high school years "focused on academics, sports, church and service." However, he acknowledged that he drank alcohol and said he wasn't always on his best behavior.
"I was not perfect in those days, just as I am not perfect today," he wrote. "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.
“But that's not why we are here today. What I've been accused of is far more serious than juvenile misbehavior."
Earlier this month, Christine Blasey Ford told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh drunkenly groped her and tried to take off her clothes at a party in the 1980s, when they were both teenagers.
“I never did anything remotely resembling what Dr. Ford describes,” Kavanaugh said in his written testimony.
Another woman, identified as Deborah Ramirez, told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh made unwanted advances toward her during a party at a dormitory during the 1983-84 school year, while they were attending Yale University.
Kavanaugh has also denied that incident took place
Check for updates to this developing story.
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