Courts

Calls For Brett Kavanaugh’s Impeachment Heat Up After A New Sexual Misconduct Allegation

Color me unsurprised.

By Kathryn Rubino on September 16, 2019 9:57 am

(Photo by MELINA MARA/AFP/Getty Images)

Maybe you spent the weekend enjoying the early fall weather or just spent time watching football or with your friends and family and were able to avoid the New York Times’ recent article about the allegations of Deborah Ramirez against Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. If so, lucky you. But with the cold light of Monday morning comes the reckoning of news from the world you missed over the weekend, and that includes more news of alleged sexual misconduct by the nation’s newest member of the Supreme Court.

Ramirez’s allegations aren’t new — Kavanaugh denied them, along with the explosive allegation of attempted rape made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, during his confirmation hearing. But the Times article digs deeper into the alleged incident:

During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening, laughed.
To Ms. Ramirez it wasn’t funny at all. It was the nadir of her first year, when she often felt insufficiently rich, experienced or savvy to mingle with her more privileged classmates.

The Times also documents the lack of an investigation into Ramirez’s allegations, indeed, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said Ramirez’s allegations were not “even remotely investigated.” The F.B.I. didn’t follow up with any of the corroborating evidence Ramirez gave them due to the limitations on the investigation placed by Republicans in the Senate:

Ms. Ramirez’s legal team gave the F.B.I. a list of at least 25 individuals who may have had corroborating evidence. But the bureau — in its supplemental background investigation — interviewed none of them, though we learned many of these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the F.B.I. on their own.

Two F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Ramirez, telling her that they found her “credible.” But the Republican-controlled Senate had imposed strict limits on the investigation. “‘We have to wait to get authorization to do anything else,’” Bill Pittard, one of Ms. Ramirez’s lawyers, recalled the agents saying. “It was almost a little apologetic.”

But as other people have already pointed out, there’s another, potentially even more noteworthy, tidbit buried in the Times piece — Ramirez’s story isn’t the only sexual misconduct allegation from Kavanaugh’s drunken college days:

We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)

These new and uninvestigated allegations have sparked calls for his impeachment from three Democratic presidential hopefuls, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Julian Castro:

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump went on a Twitter spree on Sunday defending Kavanaugh:

He also said the “Justice Department should come to [Kavanaugh’s] rescue”:

Which would seem to require an investigation, the very thing the GOP prevented when the allegations were first made.

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).