Yale classmate disputes Kavanaugh’s drinking claims

A Yale classmate of Judge Brett Kavanaugh accused him Sunday of a “blatant mischaracterization” of his drinking while in college, saying he often saw Kavanaugh “staggering from alcohol consumption.”

The classmate, Chad Ludington, who said he frequently socialized with Kavanaugh as a student, said in a statement the judge had been untruthful in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he had denied any possibility he had ever blacked out from drinking.

Ludington said Kavanaugh had played down “the degree and frequency” of his drinking, and that the judge had often become “belligerent and aggressive” while intoxicated. Other former classmates have made similar claims.

“It is truth that is at stake, and I believe that the ability to speak the truth, even when it does not reflect well upon oneself, is a paramount quality we seek in our nation’s most powerful judges,” Ludington said, adding that he planned to “take my information to the FBI.”

Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University who appears to have made small political contributions to Democratic candidates, said to The New York Times on Sunday that he had been told by the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office that he should go to the bureau’s Raleigh, North Carolina, office this morning. He said he intended to do that, so he could “tell the full details of my story.”

It is illegal to lie to Congress. But it was unclear whether the FBI would add Ludington’s accusations to the newly reopened background investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, which has been limited in scope and time by the White House and Senate Republicans.

The White House had no immediate comment about Ludington’s accusations.