Michael Avenatti has come forward with the most serious, by far, allegations yet made against Brett Kavanaugh. He provided a tweet with photographs of the documents he shared with the Senate Judiciary Committee, including a declaration from a woman named Julie Swetnick who claims that she was drugged, possibly with quaaludes, and gang raped by a group of young men at a party where Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were “present.” In addition to this, she said that she attended at least ten parties with Kavanaugh and Judge and avoided the punch because she knew it to be spiked for the purpose of incapacitating girls. She personally observed both Kavanaugh and Judge “targeting” girls in this way. She also observed both Kavanaugh and Judge “lined up” outside bedrooms to take their turn with girls who had been incapacitated. According to Avenatti, she also has two people who can and will corroborate her claims.
Below is my correspondence to Mr. Davis of moments ago, together with a sworn declaration from my client. We demand an immediate FBI investigation into the allegations. Under no circumstances should Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed absent a full and complete investigation. pic.twitter.com/QHbHBbbfbE
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) September 26, 2018
You can read the Washington Post‘s coverage of this story here.
Kavanaugh denies these allegations and says they are coming from “the Twilight Zone.” The president is attacking Avenatti. Chuck Grassley says that Avenatti defends the porn industry and wants to run for president.
Mark Judge’s ex-girlfriend independently cooperated that he was involved in at least one incident like this.
The New Yorker interviewed [Elizabeth] Rasor, who told the New Yorker that she “felt morally obligated to challenge [Judge’s] account that ‘no horseplay’ took place at Georgetown Prep with women.” She told the New Yorker that couldn’t “stand by and watch him lie,” which prompted her to speak out.
Rasor stressed to the New Yorker that Judge had told her a “very different” and disturbing story about the type of “rough-housing” he took part in. She claims that Judge had “ashamedly” told her of an incident that involved him and other boys “taking turns having sex with a drunk woman.” However, Judge allegedly told Rasor that he regarded the incident as completely consensual.
“She said that Judge did not name others involved in the incident, and she has no knowledge that Kavanaugh participated. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and noted that it undercut Judge’s protestations about the sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep,” the New Yorker reports.
Since Judge confessed to doing this kind of thing at least once, it’s certainly not impossible that he did it more than once and with his friend present. There’s a limit to how much you can confess to your girlfriend and still have a girlfriend. There’s also a major problem with the idea that teenage girls can truly consent to this kind of thing when they’ve been given powerful drugs or consumed too much alcohol. In these tellings, they did not even consent to taking the drug or understand how powerful the drinks were that they were consuming. Judge’s insistence that the woman he victimized consented is wishful thinking at best.
If these allegations are true, it’s in the nature of the crimes that there were many participants and many witnesses, as well as many additional victims. This is actually something the FBI could retroactively investigate with some hope of success.
Grassley says he may look into these new charges, but not as part of tomorrow’s hearing, which he says should be completely devoted to the testimony of Dr. Ford and Kavanaugh’s response.
