Monday, October 1, 2018

Kavanaugh - Swetnick sex abuse allegations, 'belligerent and aggressive' drinker, bar fight, text messages to refute accuser's claim before it became public


 
-  Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick speaks out on sexual abuse allegations
-  Text messages suggest Kavanaugh wanted to refute accuser's claim before it became public
-  Police questioned Kavanaugh after bar fight in 1985
-  Brett Kavanaugh was 'belligerent and aggressive' drinker, Yale classmate says

Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick speaks out on sexual abuse allegations
"I felt like somebody took me and basically said, 'You're worthless. You are nothing to us. You are disposable.'" by Kate Snow Oct.01.2018
 
....In an exclusive broadcast interview with NBC News, Swetnick claims she saw Kavanaugh behave inappropriately at parties in the early 1980s.
"He was very aggressive — very sloppy drunk, very mean drunk. I saw him — go up to girls and paw on them, try to, you know, get a little too handsy, touching them in private parts. I saw him try to shift clothing," she told Snow.
 
Swetnick said that it was only after Christine Blasey Ford came forward in a Washington Post article from September 16 to allege in Kavanaugh had attacked her during at a party that she realized she had a similar story to tell.
NBC News was unable to independently corroborate Swetnick's claims and has not spoken with anyone who says they saw Swetnick at parties with Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh has said he does not know Swetnick and has called her claims a farce.
 
Swetnick provided NBC News with the names of four friends who she said went to the parties with her. One is deceased, while two others did not respond to requests for comment. A fourth told NBC News he didn't remember Swetnick and didn't think he'd socialized with her.
Swetnick says she saw boys gathered outside closed rooms at parties but did not know what was happening behind those closed doors until she says she herself was attacked around 1982.
 
"My body was violated," she said, sighing. "My soul was broken ... I felt like somebody took me and basically said, 'You're worthless. You are nothing to us. You are disposable.'"
She described feeling unwell, being "shoved into a room" and then being raped by more than one man.
She says Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were in the same part of the house earlier that evening but she cannot be sure if they were involved....
 
Swetnick said she told her mother and a police officer about the attack shortly afterward. Both her mother and the officer are now deceased. NBC News filed a public records request for related documents, but local officials said a response could take up to 30 days....

 
Text messages suggest Kavanaugh wanted to refute accuser's claim before it became public
A former classmate of the Supreme Court nominee has reached out to the FBI but hasn't received a response.
by Heidi Przybyla and Leigh Ann Caldwell Oct.01.2018
 
WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.
 
Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.
 
The texts between Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, both friends of Kavanaugh, suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about Ramirez’s story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public. In one message, Yarasavage said Kavanaugh asked her to go on the record in his defense. Two other messages show communication between Kavanaugh's team and former classmates in advance of the story.
 
In now-public transcripts from an interview with Republican Judiciary Committee staff on September 25, two days after the Ramirez allegations were reported in the New Yorker, Kavanaugh claimed that it was Ramirez who was “calling around to classmates trying to see if they remembered it,” adding that it “strikes me as, you know, what is going on here? When someone is calling around to try to refresh other people? Is that what’s going on? What’s going on with that? That doesn’t sound — that doesn’t sound — good to me. It doesn’t sound fair. It doesn’t sound proper. It sounds like an orchestrated hit to take me out.”
 
The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated. Berchem's efforts also show that some potential witnesses have been unable to get important information to the FBI....
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/mutual-friend-ramirez-kavanaugh-anxious-come-forward-evidence-n915566
 
Text messages between Brett Kavanaugh and his classmates seem to contradict his Senate testimony David Choi
Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his staff were reportedly sending text messages to former classmates to underplay allegations that he exposed himself during a party at Yale University.
One of Kavanaugh's friends said in a message that she corresponded with "Brett" and "Brett's guy."
A recipient of the text messages said she forwarded them to the FBI because "they merit investigation by the FBI and the Senate."

She said she conveyed the contents of the messages to the FBI twice, but has not heard back as of Monday morning.
The timing of the text messages sent from Kavanaugh and members of his team may renew the inquiry surrounding testimony he gave to the Judiciary Committee last week.
Kavanaugh previously testified that he had not discussed or heard of Ramirez's allegations from The New Yorker.
But Kavanaugh later appeared to contradict himself by saying he had heard that one of his accusers was "calling around to classmates trying to see if they remembered it."
Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, and his staff were reportedly sending text messages to former classmates to underplay allegations that he exposed himself during a party at Yale University.
 
The text messages, which were obtained by NBC News, were reportedly between Kavanaugh's friends, Kerry Berchem and Karen Yarasavage. Based on the contents of the messages, Kavanaugh himself may reached out to his classmates to undercut the claims made by former classmate Deborah Ramirez, who told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh had exposed himself in front of others at a dorm-room party during the 1983-84 school year.
According to one message, Yarasavage said that Kavanaugh had asked her to defend him on the record, NBC News reported. Other messages indicate that Kavanaugh's surrogates had communicated with his former classmates before the story's publication....
https://www.businessinsider.com/did-brett-kavanaugh-commit-perjury-testimony-new-yorker-article-deborah-ramirez-2018-10

 

Police questioned Kavanaugh after bar fight in 1985
Anchor Muted Background By Kate Sullivan, CNN
Mon October 1, 2018

Washington (CNN) Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of starting an altercation while he was a student at Yale, according to a 1985 police report obtained by CNN, after police responded "in regards to an assault."
In the New Haven, Connecticut, police department report, a man named Dom Cozzolino said Kavanaugh had thrown ice on him and Kavanaugh's friend Chris Dudley had thrown a glass that hit him in the ear.
"The argument between the two started when Mr. Cozzolino stated that Brett Kavanaugh threw ice at him for some unknown reason and he then got hit in the ear with a glass," the report says.

Dudley denied the allegations, according to the report, "and Mr. Kavanaugh didn't (want) to say if he threw the ice or not. "
The police report does not indicate whether anyone was arrested, and New Haven's police chief, Anthony Campbell, told CNN there are no other records he is aware of involving Kavanaugh....
 
Chad Ludington, a former classmate of Kavanaugh's, has said Kavanaugh did not tell the truth about his drinking in his testimony Thursday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. In Ludington's statement released Sunday he also mentions an altercation involving Kavanaugh: "On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man's face."

Ludington told CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time" anchor Chris Cuomo that the altercation happened after a UB40 concert, when he and a group of friends were drinking at Demery's.
They were sitting near a man who they thought looked like the lead singer of UB40, Ali Campbell, and were trying to figure out whether it was him, Ludington told Cuomo.
The man noticed Ludington, Kavanaugh and the others looking at him and -- according to Ludington -- aggressively asked them to stop.

Ludington told Cuomo he initially remembered Kavanaugh then threw his beer at the man, but recently found out from the report that there were ice cubes in the thrown drink.
"We weren't drinking water, so it must've been some sort of mixed drink," Ludington told Cuomo.
The man next then "took a swing at Brett," Ludington continued, and then they were "two guys fighting -- that was all very quick."
 
Dudley then took his drink and "proceeded to smash it up against the guy's head," Ludington recalled.
There was some shouting, and then the police showed up, Ludington said. They looked around and asked questions, he said, and then Dudley was put in a squad car and taken to jail....
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/01/politics/nyt-police-kavanaugh-bar-fight/index.html 

Brett Kavanaugh was 'belligerent and aggressive' drinker, Yale classmate says
John Bacon, USA TODAY Oct. 1, 2018
Another Yale classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh challenged the truthfulness of the Supreme Court nominee's Senate testimony, saying Kavanaugh was often "belligerent and aggressive" when he drank.
Charles "Chad" Ludington, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, released a statement saying Kavanaugh "has not told the truth" when denying he never blacked out and downplaying his drinking as a young man.
 
"On many occasions, I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption," Ludington wrote. "When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive."
Ludington said he would not discuss Kavanaugh with the media but would tell his story to the FBI. The agency is conducting a one-week investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against the federal judge that date back to high school.
 
Last week, Seattle physician and Yale classmate Liz Swisher said Kavanaugh was a "sloppy drunk" in college. Freshman-year roommate James Roche said Kavanaugh was a "notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and … became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk."
 
Roche said he believed Deborah Ramirez, another Yale classmate, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.
The New York Times reported Monday that in September 1985, Kavanaugh was involved in an altercation at a bar in which he was accused of throwing ice at another patron. The Times report cited a police report of the New Haven incident and said Kavanaugh was not arrested.
 
According to the police report, the victim in the case said that after Kavanaugh hurled the ice, a friend of Kavanaugh's threw a glass and hit the victim in the ear, causing him to bleed. The man was treated at a hospital and Kavanaugh, speaking to officers, did not want "to say if he threw the ice or not," the Times quoted the police report as saying.
 
Ludington said he was a varsity basketball player and Kavanaugh enjoyed socializing with athletes. Ludington said he "cringed" when he watched Kavanaugh describe his drinking on a Fox News TV interview and in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"In recent days, I have become deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterization by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale," Ludington wrote. "Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker."...

No comments: