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Kavanaugh’s classmates say he lied under oath about his ‘sloppy drunk’ days

"I don't think many of his answers were credible," said one Yale classmate.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh prepares to the testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building Tuesday Sept. 4, 2018. CREDIT: Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh prepares to the testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building Tuesday Sept. 4, 2018. CREDIT: Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images.

Brett Kavanaugh might have survived being questioned during a Senate hearing on his path to securing a spot on the Supreme Court, but the fight is far from over.

For one thing, there will be a week-long FBI investigation into Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that Kavanaugh and another friend tried to rape her in high school.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the FBI has also reached out to Debbie Ramirez, Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate, who has also accused the federal court judge of sexual misconduct.

The FBI investigation came about largely because Republicans — who wanted to “plough through” the approval process for Kavanaugh, faced a PR nightmare after Ford’s gut-wrenching testimony, in which she testified that the judge tried to force himself on her, and laughed along with a friend as, terrified, she struggled to break free.

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Now, his classmates have begun coming out of the woodwork to dispute testimony he made this week under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the frequency and extent of alcohol consumption. Asked about episodes of illness that appeared to have been linked to alcohol abuse, he said he merely suffered from “a weak stomach.”

Here is Kavanaugh, sounding angry and defensive when questioned about his drinking in high school and college:

At several turns during the questioning about his drinking, Kavanaugh drinking, highlighted his academic achievements instead.

Unfortunately for him, much of that heavy drinking was done in public (which he might have remembered had he not been so inebriated at the time?) And some of those who witnessed it have come forward.

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His Yale classmate, Liz Swisher, told Chris Cuomo on Friday night that Kavanaugh was a “sloppy drunk” who hit beer bongs, partied hard and that she knew of “no weak stomach.”

“I would have stayed on the sidelines if he had said, ‘I drank to excess in high school. I drank to excess in college. I did some stupid things. But I never sexually assaulted anybody’… but to lie under oath, to lie about that, then what else is true?” said Swisher.

“To not know the difference between truth and lies — that’s just terrible,” she added, also making it clear however that she had never seen Kavanaugh sexually assaulting anyone.

Swisher is not alone. Other classmates, including Daniel Lavan, who was Kavanaugh’s freshman dorm mate, have also spoken up about how the Supreme Court nominee misrepresented himself to the panel under oath.

“I definitely saw him on multiple occasions stumbling drunk where he could not have rational control over his actions or clear recollection of them. His depiction of himself is inaccurate,” said Lavan in a report carried in Mother Jones.

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Through her lawyer, Ford had requested an FBI probe into her claims prior to her testimony, but that request was denied.  But after Ford was finally heard on Thursday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) sided with Democrats in asking for a week-long delay in the process to give the FBI a small window to look into the allegations leveled against Kavanaugh by Ford.

Whatever the FBI investigation into Ford’s claims prove or don’t prove, one thing is clear: Kavanaugh is now facing allegations of perjuring himself — that’s a felony.

So the questions is: Why? Would would a judge commit a felony as a means of defending himself against allegations that he’d committed an earlier felony?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Saturday said “if he is not telling the truth, to Congress or to the FBI, then he’s not fit not only to be on the Supreme Court but to be on the court that he’s on right now.”