Letter accuses Kavanaugh of assault attempt
Supreme Court nominee denies alleged incident
A secret letter charges that a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and a male friend trapped a teenage girl during a party and tried to assault her.
WASHINGTON — A secretive letter shared with senators and federal investigators by the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee charges that a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and a male friend trapped a teenage girl in a bedroom during a party and tried to assault her, according to three people familiar with the contents of the letter.
The letter says that Kavanaugh, then a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in suburban Washington and now President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, had been drinking at a social gathering when he and the male friend took the teenage girl into a bedroom. The door was locked, and she was thrown on the bed. Kavanaugh then got on top of the teenager and put a hand over her mouth, as the music was turned up, according to the account.
But the young woman was able to extricate herself and leave the room, the letter says.
She has declined to be publicly identified, and she asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, not to publicize the letter.
In a statement shared by the White House, Kavanaugh said the charges were false.
“I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation,” he said. “I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
The friend who is said to have participated, Mark Judge, also denied the episode ever happened.
“I never saw anything like what was described,” he said in an interview after being informed that he was named in the letter.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was still planning to move ahead with Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a key vote to advance the nomination next Thursday, and Republican leaders hope to hold a final vote of the full Senate before the end of September to allow Kavanaugh to be seated before the start of the Supreme Court’s fall term next month.
Grassley’s aides said Kavanaugh had been the subject of six FBI background checks since 1993, and none had turned up anything like the episode in question.
Meanwhile, according to the Washington Post, Kavanaugh’s allies moved aggressively to defend the nominee and push back against the allegation.
A group of women who said they knew Kavanaugh in high school made contact late Thursday afternoon with several of the nominee’s former clerks who are helping in Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. The women offered their help, and eventually the group decided to draft a letter defending Kavanaugh’s character, according to a person involved in the process.