NBC News aired an interview yesterday with Julie Swetnick, the woman who says she was at parties in the early 1980s where she saw Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge waiting for their turns at unconscious women. Judging by spin from the Kavasphere (Stupidest Man on the Internet Jim Hoft calls her "Crazy Liar Swetnick"), you might think Swetnick had said her attorney, Michael Avenatti, had invented her sworn statement based on scenes from The Exorcist, with additional dialogue by George Soros. But in reality, most of what she said in the interview was in line with the text of the statement, albeit with some differences that are not so much contradictions as clarifications. Is Swetnick the witness who'll sink Kavanaugh's nomination? That has more to do with Kavanaugh's rabid fratboy supporters in the Senate than anything she said. She doesn't claim anything impossible in the interview, and parts of it match what Mark Judge's former girlfriend has already said, so if anything, there's all the more reason for the FBI to look further into Swetnick's claims.
Swetnick told NBC's Kate Snow that as a community college student, she sometimes attended house parties where there were tons of drunk high school and college students ranging in age from 15 to 25. Among those she remembers were Brett Kavanaugh, his partner in dissipation Mark Judge, and lots of other preppies from the Georgetown area. Swetnick told Snow Kavanaugh was "very aggressive — very sloppy drunk, very mean drunk," which fits with what other people from the time have also said, although every one of them is lying according to Republicans. Not just drunk, but handsy drunk:
I saw him — go up to girls and paw on them, try to, you know, get a little too handsy, touching them in private parts. I saw him try to shift clothing.
In rebuttal of anyone who said such behavior was unthinkable for a nice Catholic school boy, we submit the Frank Zappa album Joe's Garage and every comedy bit George Carlin ever did about his own Jesuit high school.
As for the supposed "discrepancies" from the written statement, they really sound more like elaborations: In the statement, Swetnick said she "became aware of efforts by" KavaJudge "and others to 'spike' the punch" with drugs and booze so girls would "lose their inhibitions and their ability to say no." In the interview, she said that while she never saw Kavanough putting anything in a punchbowl, she definitely saw him and Judge near punchbowls, and that she'd seen Kavanaugh "giving red Solo cups to quite a few girls during that time frame" and that "I would not take one of those glasses from" the young sot.
Similarly, where in the statement she said she'd seen Kavanaugh, Judge and other boys "lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their 'turn' with a girl inside the room," Swetnick told Snow they weren't so much lined up crowded around and waiting to go into the room:
Swetnick: Until what happened to me happened to me, I didn't put two and two together, but I would see boys standing outside of rooms, congregated together, sort of like a gauntlet, and I didn't know what was occurring, but I would see them laughing, a lot of laughing --
Snow: Standing in line, outside a room?
Swetnick: Not line, but definitely huddled outside doors, and I didn't understand what it could possibly be.
She certainly didn't back off from her statement that she'd seen Judge and Kavanaugh standing outside a room like that, although she only made sense of it in retrospect.
So yeah, that addresses one of the dumb "gotcha" questions rightwingers have been Just Asking in bad faith: Swetnick didn't keep going to parties where she knew rapes were happening; she only connected the dots once it happened to her, as she told Snow.
What happened to me is probably the most horrendous, awful thing that could happen to a human being. My body was violated; my soul was broken [...] I felt like somebody took me and basically said, 'You're worthless. You are nothing to us. You are disposable.
Hey, where else did we hear about raucous conspiratorial laughter from drunken rapey boys? And about Mark Judge having participated in a gang rape? It's almost as if there are a lot more "she saids" the FBI needs to listen to.
Swetnick also notes that she reported the rape to police; NBC's Snow says the police department may take up to a month to retrieve a report from 1982.
Swetnick also clarified she doesn't remember whether Kavanaugh or Judge were among those who raped her, but she did say they had been in the same general area of the house: "[Before] this happened to me, at that party, I saw Brett Kavanaugh there."
That clears up some ambiguous phrasing in the statement, where she said Kavajudge had been present:
NBC hasn't been able to confirm the story with any of the four people Swetnick named -- one died, which obviously makes her a liar, and one other said they didn't remember her. Two others haven't gotten back to NBC yet, which wingnuts are seizing on as proof that Swetnick is lying. Hey, since we're speculating, perhaps there's a greater than zero chance those two are waiting to talk to the FBI first? And if the police report isn't here today, then obviously it doesn't exist, either.
And about those Quaaludes: Funny thing! It turns out a whole bunch of Kavanaugh's buds in high school included hilarious jokes about "Killer Qs" in their yearbook -- one even mentioned the "Killer Q's Club" right after a line about "Revolving Rooms (Beach Week '82)." And wouldn't you believe it, those pals were among those Kavanaugh mentioned in his "what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep" speech.
Undoubtedly, that meant really difficult questions on exams, just like the "murder boards" law students and Supreme Court nominees go through. Hard-drinking academic achievers generally spend Beach Week in high school prepping for tests, don't they? What, next you filthy libs will say Brett Kavanaugh killed someone because he did murder boards, won't you?
[ NBC News / HuffPo / Medium ]
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Hear, hear.
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