- Three people who identified themselves as Brett Kavanaugh’s “drinking buddies” at Yale University said he perjured himself and shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court.
- Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee he never blacked out while drinking. These classmates say he did.
- Kavanaugh’s drinking habits is just one of several falsehoods Kavanaugh appeared to have made before the Senate.
Three of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s self-described “drinking buddies” from his days at Yale University in the 1980s have written an op-ed in the Washington Post opposing his confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.
According to the three – Charles Ludington, Lynne Brookes and Elizabeth Swisher – Kavanaugh perjured himself when he said under oath that he never drank to the point to forgetting what he was doing. Since Kavanaugh testified he never blacked out in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, each has individually spoken to journalists about their reservations.
“We said, unequivocally, that each of us, on numerous occasions, had seen Brett stumbling drunk to the point that it would be impossible for him to state with any degree of certainty that he remembered everything that he did when drunk,” they wrote in the op-ed.
Read more: Those who knew Brett Kavanaugh in his youth have described his hard-drinking habits – but he portrayed himself differently during his Senate hearing
The group said coming forward has disrupted their lives, destroyed friendships, and led to the hacking of one of their work servers. But they said they were compelled to speak out to maintain the integrity of the court.
"We each believe that telling the truth, no matter how difficult, is a moral obligation for our nation's leaders," they wrote. "No one should be able to lie their way onto the Supreme Court. Honesty is the glue that holds together a society of laws. Lies are the solvent that dissolves those bonds."
Kavanaugh's comments about his drinking habits in high school and college have become a linchpin in the debate over his honesty. Speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27 following Christine Blasey Ford's sexual assault allegations, Kavanaugh repeatedly asserted he "liked beer" but that his drinking was under control.
"I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out," he said.
The characterization has been disputed by multiple people who knew him in high school in college. Kavanaugh also said he drank in high school and that the legal age of drinking in Maryland at the time was 18, which is false.
Read More: Kavanaugh goes back and forth with Democratic senator about strange details in high-school yearbook, including references to beer and 'flatulence'
Kavanaugh's college roommate, James Roche, has also come forward to dispute Kavanaugh's claims that he rarely drank to excess in high school and college. "What struck me and made me more interested in speaking out ... is not only did I know that he wasn't telling the truth," Roche told CNN. "I knew that he knew that he wasn't telling the truth."
Kavanaugh's honesty during his Senate hearings and his interview with Fox News in September has been disputed in other areas as well. During his Judiciary Committee hearing, he said the witnesses Ford cited "refuted" her allegations, when they did no such thing. He also said that a reference in his yearbook to being a "Renate Alumnius" is a term of affection for a former classmate, while other high school classmates said it was a degrading boast about a sexual conquest.