alcohol

Kavanaugh’s 1983 Letter Offers Inside Look at High School Clique

The beachfront property was rented, the guests were invited and an ever-organized Brett M. Kavanaugh had some advice for the seven Georgetown Preparatory School classmates who would be joining him for the weeklong escapade.

In a 1983 letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, the young Judge Kavanaugh warned his friends of the danger of eviction from an Ocean City, Md., condo. In a neatly written postscript, he added: Whoever arrived first at the condo should “warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go about 30 miles…”

.. The judge has said that he attended high school parties. “Sometimes I had too many beers,” he testified, adding that he has “cringed” at some of his behavior back then. But his public statements don’t fully capture the binge-drinking culture in which classmates say he was a core participant.

Parties, in the backyards of classmates’ suburban homes when their parents were away, would often attract hundreds of students from nearby private schools, his classmates recall. Five or 10 kegs would be procured and, if all went as planned, drained by the end of the night.

One night during his senior year, according to classmates who witnessed it, Judge Kavanaugh triumphantly hoisted an empty beer keg above his head, in recognition that he and his friends were well on their way to reaching their goal of polishing off 100 kegs during the academic year — an achievement they later boasted about in their yearbook.

Four Georgetown Prep classmates said they saw Judge Kavanaugh and his friends partake in binge-drinking rituals many weekends in which other partygoers saw them inebriated, even having difficulty standing. Three of those classmates signed a July letter, along with more than 150 other alumni, that endorsed him for the Supreme Court.

.. Judge Kavanaugh — nicknamed “Bart” after a Georgetown Prep teacher garbled “Brett” — sometimes acted as a restraining influence. One night, a friend named Sean Feeley was out of control. Judge Kavanaugh pulled him aside and whispered three words: “Come on, Sean.” Mr. Feeley today credits Judge Kavanaugh with knowing how to calm classmates without them losing face.

.. Mr. Judge was widely perceived as a goofball with a big mouth. “He was a clown,” said Richard Holtz, a classmate and friend of Mr. Judge’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s. Once, before a home football game, Mr. Judge and some classmates chugged beers and then dressed up in blue-and-white cheerleader skirts and pranced around the field, a moment that was captured in the school’s yearbook.

Details in Kavanaugh’s 1982 calendar entry could be scrutinized in FBI investigation

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) pressed Kavanaugh on whether the reference to “skis” on his calendar referred to “brewskis,” which the nominee did not dispute. Booker also asked him whether he drank on weekdays.

Why Brett Kavanaugh Wasn’t Believable

Judge Kavanaugh, when it was his turn, was not laughing. He was yelling. He spent more than half an hour raging against Senate Democrats and the “Left” for “totally and permanently” destroying his name, his career, his family, his life. He called his confirmation process a “national disgrace.”

“You may defeat me in the final vote, but you will never get me to quit,” Judge Kavanaugh said, sounding like someone who suddenly doubted his confirmation to the Supreme Court — an outcome that seemed preordained only a couple of weeks ago.

Judge Kavanaugh’s defiant fury might be understandable coming from someone who believes himself innocent of the grotesque charges he’s facing. Yet it was also evidence of an unsettling temperament in a man trying to persuade the nation of his judicial demeanor.

.. As he put it in his testimony, “What goes around, comes around,” in the partisan vortex that has been intensifying in Washington for decades now. His open contempt for the Democrats on the committee also raised further questions about his own fair-mindedness, and it served as a reminder of his decades as a Republican warrior who would take no prisoners.

.. He gave coy answers when pressed about what was clearly a sexual innuendo in his high-school yearbook.

He insisted over and over that others Dr. Blasey named as attending the gathering had “said it didn’t happen,” when in fact at least two of them have said only that they don’t recall it — and one of them told a reporter that she believes Dr. Blasey.

.. Judge Kavanaugh clumsily dodged a number of times when senators asked him about his drinking habits. When Senator Amy Klobuchar gently pressed him about whether he’d ever blacked out from drinking, he at first wouldn’t reply directly. “I don’t know, have you?” he replied — a condescending and dismissive response to the legitimate exercise of a senator’s duty of advise and consent. (Later, after a break in the hearing, he apologized.)

.. Judge Kavanaugh gave categorical denials a number of times, including, at other points, that he’d ever blacked out from too much drinking. Given numerous reports now of his heavy drinking in college, such a blanket denial is hard to believe.

.. then there’s the fact that she gains nothing by coming forward. She is in hiding now with her family in the face of death threats.

.. cowardice of the committee’s 11 Republicans, all of them men, and none of them, apparently, capable of asking Dr. Blasey a single question.

.. Eventually, as Judge Kavanaugh testified, the Republican senators ventured out from behind their shield. Doubtless seeking to ape President’s Trump style and win his approval, they began competing with each other to make the most ferocious denunciation of their Democratic colleagues and the most heartfelt declaration of sympathy for Judge Kavanaugh, in a show of empathy far keener than they managed to muster for Dr. Blasey.

.. Pressed over and over by Democratic senators, Judge Kavanaugh never could come up with a clear answer for why he wouldn’t also want a fair, neutral F.B.I. investigation into the allegations against him — the kind of investigation the agency routinely performs, and that Dr. Blasey has called for. At one point, though, he acknowledged that it was common sense to put some questions to other potential witnesses besides him.

.. When Senator Patrick Leahy asked whether the judge was the inspiration for a hard-drinking character named Bart O’Kavanaugh in a memoir about teenage alcoholism by Mr. Judge, Judge Kavanaugh replied, “You’d have to ask him.”

Asking Mr. Judge would be a great idea. Unfortunately he’s hiding out in a Delaware beach town and Senate Republicans are refusing to subpoena him.

.. Why? Mr. Judge is the key witness in Dr. Blasey’s allegation. He has said he has no recollection of the party or of any assault. But he hasn’t faced live questioning to test his own memory and credibility. And Dr. Blasey is far from alone in describing Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge as heavy drinkers; several of Judge Kavanaugh’s college classmates have said the same.

.. If the committee will not make a more serious effort, the only choice for senators seeking to protect the credibility of the Supreme Court will be to vote no.