In the face of numerous allegations of sexual assault dating back to his high school and college years, all of which are said to have involved copious alcohol use, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has tried to push back on reports that make it seem as though he and his friends were frequently drunk and belligerent, claiming he was a well-behaved boy who simply liked (and still likes!) beer — a characterization that a mounting number of his classmates are calling inaccurate.
Though he claimed during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of his female “feminist” friends from college sent him a text telling him that he’s a “good man,” a growing number of his former classmates are recalling harsher images of Kavanaugh: someone who was “belligerent,” “aggressive,” and “often drank to excess.” But many of those latter classmates — who explicitly stated they were willing to cooperate with the FBI — were never contacted by the bureau, bringing into question the scope of the investigation, and whose interests it sought to protect.
Below, a list of every one of Kavanaugh’s former classmates who have called out his lies.
“In denying the possibility that he ever blacked out from drinking, and in downplaying the degree and frequency of his drinking, Brett has not told the truth.”
In a statement issued to the New York Times, Chad Ludington, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who claims they frequently drank together, said he is “deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterization by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale.”
“When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive,” said Ludington. “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 and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”
And while Ludington stressed that he doesn’t believe “the loutish behavior of an 18- or even 21-year-old should condemn a person for the rest of his life,” he does think that “Brett’s actions as a 53-year-old federal judge matter.”
“Loud, obnoxious, frat boy-like drunks.”
Kit Winter lived in the same dorm as Kavanaugh at Yale, where he remembers the SCOTUS nominee and his crowd as “loud, obnoxious, frat boy-like drunks.” He also recalled a shared bathroom that was perpetually covered in vomit.
“I have thought a lot about Kavanaugh’s statement on Fox, that he never drank so much that he didn’t remember what he had done the next morning,” he told the Cut. “And having witnessed the level of drunkenness of Brett and his crew in that dorm, and the vomitous aftermath in the bathroom, I find that very hard to believe.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that while at Yale, he was a big partier, often drank to excess, and there had to be a number of nights where he does not remember.”
In an interview with CNN, Lynne Brookes — the former roommate of Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a Yale party — asserted she was “extremely disappointed” in the judge’s “blatant lying.” She said:
I watched the whole hearing, and a number of my Yale colleagues and I were extremely disappointed in Brett Kavanaugh’s characterization of himself and the way that he evaded his excessive drinking questions. There is no doubt in my mind that while at Yale, he was a big partier, often drank to excess, and there had to be a number of nights where he does not remember. In fact, I was witness to the night that he got tapped into that fraternity, and he was stumbling drunk in a ridiculous costume saying really dumb things. I can almost guarantee that there’s no way that he remembers that night … There were a lot of emails and a lot of texts flying around about how he was lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee today.
“It’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”
Liz Swisher, a college friend of Kavanaugh’s, told the Washington Post that, although “there’s no medical way [she] can say that he was blacked out … it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”
“Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him,” she said. “I watched him drink more than a lot of people. He’d end up slurring his words, stumbling.”
On October 4, Ludington, Brookes, and Swisher co-wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post under the headline, “We were Brett Kavanaugh’s drinking buddies. We don’t think he should be confirmed.”
“All of us went to Yale, whose motto is ‘Lux et Veritas’ (Light and Truth),” the op-ed reads. “Brett also belonged to a Yale senior secret society called Truth and Courage. We believe that Brett neither tells the former nor embodies the latter.”
“Frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk.”
Following Ramirez’s accusation against Kavanaugh, his former roommate James Roche spoke out in solidarity with Ramirez, releasing a statement that read, in part: “Although Brett was normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and … he became belligerent and aggressive when he was very drunk.”
“Based on my time with Debbie, I believe her to be unusually honest and straightforward and I cannot imagine her making this up,” Roche continued. “Based on my time with Brett, I believe that he and his social circle were capable of the actions that Debbie described.”
On October 2, Roche also disputed Kavanaugh’s definition of “boofing,” which the SCOTUS nominee claimed to mean farting (or “flatulence”) during his testimony. Roche offered a different meaning of Twitter:
“‘Boofing’ meant sex. Not sex with a girlfriend. Sex with someone who doesn’t matter. People would say ‘I want to boof her’, not ‘I want to boof with her.’” He then clarified that “boofing” specifically referred to anal sex.
"Boofing" meant sex. Not sex with a girlfriend. Sex with someone who doesn't matter. People would say "I want to boof her", not "I want to boof with her."
— Jamie Roche (@jamie_roche) October 2, 2018
Kavanuagh allegedly texted Yale classmates in an attempt to get ahead of Deborah Ramirez’s allegations.
According to a report by NBC News, Kavanaugh had begun reaching out to former classmates about Deborah Ramirez’s allegation against him well before the September 23 New Yorker article was published. This directly contradicts Kavanaugh’s statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the article was the first time he had heard of Ramirez’s claim.
Text messages between former classmates of Kavanaugh’s, Kerry Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, show that members of Kavanaugh’s legal team and even Kavanaugh himself may have reached out to former classmates in an effort to discredit Ramirez’s claims as early as July, well before the article was published. Berchem told NBC News through her lawyer that she tried multiple times to get the text messages to the FBI.
“I am in receipt of text messages from a mutual friend of both Debbie and mine that raise questions related to the allegations,” said a portion of Berchem’s statement. “I have not drawn any conclusions as to what the texts may mean or may not mean but I do believe they merit investigation by the FBI and the Senate.”
