In the wake of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, the media have doubled down on efforts to turn up evidence of untoward behavior in high school and college — as if doing so will bolster Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual-assault allegations against him.
Abetting them in their quest over the weekend were two of Kavanaugh’s classmates from his time at Yale, both of whom asserted without evidence that Kavanaugh had lied about his drinking habits.
On CNN on Friday night, Chris Cuomo interviewed Liz Swisher, one of Kavanaugh’s former classmates. “What do you know about Brett Kavanaugh that he was not truthful about in the hearing?” Cuomo asked her.
“I would’ve stayed on the sidelines if he’d 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,’” Swisher told Cuomo. “But to lie under oath, to lie about that, then what else is true?”
But Swisher’s comment about what she believes Kavanaugh ought to have said in order to be truthful lines up almost exactly with what Kavanaugh did say during his testimony. “I drank beer with my friends,” he said in his opening statement. ”Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone.”
That statement is nearly word for word what Swisher said her former classmate ought to have testified. And yet she appeared on CNN to offer this commentary and call him a liar.
Meanwhile, another of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmates, Chad Ludington, issued a statement on Sunday claiming that Kavanaugh made a “blatant mischaracterization” of his drinking habits. His statement, however, failed to indicate exactly what Kavanaugh mischaracterized. Ludington offered no new evidence or information that contradicted what Kavanaugh himself has already admitted.
The heart of Kavanaugh’s testimony with regard to his drinking, of course, was that despite sometimes overdrinking, he had never consumed alcohol “to the point of blacking out” and forgetting what had happened. Ludington could not recount a single instance in which Kavanaugh passed out, blacked out, or suffered memory loss as a result of overdrinking.
And yet he writes in the conclusion of his statement, “I can unequivocally say that 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.”
Unless he still possesses an as-yet-undisclosed story of Kavanaugh blacking out from drinking, Ludington cannot unequivocally say anything of the sort. Neither he nor Swisher has offered us any new evidence — except for evidence that they, like much of the media and the left, are determined to sink Brett Kavanaugh no matter the cost.