A total low-life
Now Avenatti has dropped the bomb he’s been promising.
A third accuser of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday publicly identified herself and alleged that Kavanaugh and others while in high school spiked the drinks of girls at parties with intoxicants to make it easier for them to be gang raped.
The woman, Julie Swetnick, said Kavanaugh was in line with other boys, including his close friend Mark Judge, waiting to rape those girls at many parties, and that she once became a victim herself. The allegations were detailed in an affidavit released by her lawyer, Michael Avenatti.
Trump has already issued a statement.
Avenatti is a third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations, like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He is just looking for attention and doesn’t want people to look at his past record and relationships – a total low-life!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2018
Such a dignified, thoughtful, fair-minded president.
The White House had no immediate comment on Swetnick’s allegations, which were signed under penalty of perjury.
Trump’s tweet came after the piece was written and posted – I know that because it came in as a breaking news pop-up headline while I was reading the piece. That’s the White House comment – Avenatti is a total low-life.
A 1980 graduate of Gaithersburg High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, [Swetnick] said she has has held multiple work clearances for work done at the Treasury Department, U.S. Mint, IRS, State Department and Justice Department, among others.
Swetnick, in the affidavit posted on Twitter by Avenatti, claims that she saw Kavanaugh, as a high school student in Maryland in the early 1980s, “drink excessively at many” house parties in suburban Maryland. At the time, Kavanaugh and Judge were students at the the private Catholic school Georgetown Prep.
She said he and Judge engaged in “abusive and physically agressive behavior toward girls,” which “included the fondling and groping of girls without their consent” and “not taking ‘No’ for an answer.”
During the years of 1981 and 1982 she said she learned of efforts by Kavanaugh, his friend Judge and others “to spike the drinks of girls at house parties I attended with grain alcohol and/or drugs so as to cause girls to lose inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No.’ “
But they went to a Catholic school, as Kavanaugh said with such emphasis on Fox Monday night. Surely Catholic boys treat girls with respect.
I’ll admit to not being Avenatti’s biggest fan myself – he’s clever and certainly has run rings around Trump and his cronies but he’s a little too Trump-like himself for me to warm to him. And I definitely do not want him to run for president.
Having said that – I find it almost impossible to believe that any woman would write a statement such as he released today if it were untrue. It’s a horrific account, one that in these cynical days shocks when little else does.
The starkest thing to me is that far from exonerating him, this calendar of Kavanaugh’s actually backs up the accounts of Ford and Swetnick. There’s Beach Week, highlighted in his calendar, as mentioned by Swetnick. And a gathering where all four of the boys named by Ford were present.
If this were a sane world, we would stick a fork in Kavanaugh because he is done.
I do like Avenatti as Trump-antagonist, because he’s SOOOOOOOO much better at it. But as president? No no no a million times no.
Julie Swetnick’s statements don’t seem to add up. She graduated from high school in 1980 and attended high school parties in 1981 – 82?
She observed Kavanaugh and his friend Mark waiting for their chance to participate in train-rape or gang rape that was going on. And she did not call 911?
She says the high school parties were organized on almost every weekend during 1981 – 82 and she went to about 10 of these parties. She knew the boys in those parties were using drugs and alcohol so girls won’t be able to resist when they rape them. She herself was a victim of gang rape. After all this she did not call 911 or police!
Democrats should carefully vet her statements. There is a very real risk of her questionable statements jeopardizing the more credible claims of Dr. Ford in tomorrow’s testimony.
Avenatti is responsible for this mess. For once, I agree with Trump “Avenatti is a low-life and a 3rd rate lawyer”. Like Trump, it is always about him and others don’t matter. He is undermining Dr. Ford and he doesn’t care. He does whatever serves his purpose.
Kalyani, I know that there are people who continue attending high school parties for a couple of years after they graduate, if they remain in town. Some of my friends did, because they attended high school with many of the people who are present at those parties, and may have friends there. So that is possible.
As for not calling 911, it seems impossible to us, because we would not act that way, or at least we are sure we would not. But peer pressure is a powerful thing. And the urge to conform during your teen years is stronger probably than any other time. Teens are not rebellious, they are conformists, it’s just that they conform to their peers and not their parents (which means rebelling against their parents is a form of conformity). You don’t want to be the “snitch”, the one that tells teacher, the one that can’t take a joke, the one that lets the group down. I begin to feel more and more fortunate that I did not have friends in high school, and therefore did not have to deal with this particular aspect of adolescence.
I am not saying that she is telling the truth; I do not know that. I am only saying that, while these things will seem suspicious to most people, I do not automatically dismiss them because of the nature of teenagers and our social structure and rape culture. Many girls who have been raped in similar situations may feel that it was somehow their fault, and that makes them hesitant to come forward. And why do they think it’s their fault? Because the entire damned culture is telling them it’s their fault. Because we all breathe in the myth of the virgin/slut dichotomy, and even those of us who intellectually reject it can find ourselves falling into that trap.
So, yeah, there are things they need to explore and make sure about, but if her story fits sufficiently with the other details of the case, I think the objections you’ve brought up may be overcome (though I doubt they will be overcome, no matter what the facts, because so many people want this to be a false story).