The Brett Kavanaugh nomination is producing reporting on the culture of Washington prep school life in his day — a time of heavy drinking long before Me, Too. Example: The Washington Post today. But it also spurred accounts of Kavanaugh’s lack of truthfulness on other matters.
They described parties with kegs of beer and bottles of liquor, grain punch, heavy drinking and drug use that took place almost every weekend and even on weeknights in private homes, parks, open fields and golf courses in Maryland and Washington. Until 1986, the drinking age in Washington was 18, and alcohol was easily accessible. Drugs, especially cocaine and quaaludes, were plentiful.
Women who attended those parties remember sexually aggressive behavior by some of the male students that often bordered on assault and was routinely fueled by excessive drinking
“Most of the guys at these schools were really decent, nice guys, but there was a small minority that was popular and was out of control,” said a woman who attended Georgetown Visitation in the early 1980s and asked not to be identified. “I never got dragged into a bedroom, but that . . . happened to girls all the time.”
Re truthfulness: The Washington Post fact checker examines in depth Kavanaugh’s testimony that he had no idea he was seeing stolen Democratic information while working at the White House on judicial nominees. Conclusion: Three Pinocchios.
Kavanaugh has maintained that nothing raised red flags and that he never received documents that appeared to be stolen or obtained in an “untoward” manner.
These claims defy logic. An elite Republican lawyer who was immersed at the time in Washington’s inside baseball, Kavanaugh strains credulity by claiming this extraordinary window he had into Democrats’ thinking seemed aboveboard. He received a steady stream of insider information over nine months from Miranda, according to the documents available. It reminds us of Sergeant Schultz in the 1960s TV show “Hogan’s Heroes” — “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!”
The article also lists several clearly inaccurate (dishonest?) statements in Kavanaugh’s testimony. This isn’t the only issue on which his credibility has been called into question.
It may not matter. Republicans seem intent on pushing through with a committee vote on him next week. They weren’t in such a hurry while refusing to have a hearing in 2016 on Merrick Garland.
PS: Kavanaugh said to like his female law clerks to have a “certain look.” Which brings to mind his claim that he knew nothing, though apparently everyone else in the world did, about the misogynistic ways of his mentor, Judge Alex Kozinski.