repeatedly blatantly lied about it. most recently, a yale classmate of kavanaugh s named chad luddington says he has nothing to contribute about what kind of justice he would be, in recent days, i have become deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracter saization brett himself of his drinking at yale. quote, brett was a frequent drinker and a heavy drinker. i know because especially in our first two years of college i often drank with him. on many occasions i heard brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. when brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. on one of the last occasions i purposely socialized with brett, i witnessed him respond to a semihostile remark not by diffusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.
last week, we saw republicans on the senate judiciary committee outsource their question time to a woman, arizona prosecutor rachel mitchell. according to the ground rules, she would interview both dr. christine blasey ford, the professor accusing donald trump s supreme court nominee of sexual assault when the two were in high school, and she would also interview brett kavanaugh. the republicans on the committee and would listen and, i don t know, maybe take notes. and ms. mitchell did indeed interview dr. ford, taking each senator s time and q&a ing her in five-minute increments. but the prosecutor was benched by republicans abruptly in the middle of judge kavanaugh s part of the hearing, so we would wind up hearing less from her than expected. but now, we are hearing from her again. in a report obtained by nbc news, ms. mitchell told republicans that she has, in fact, reached a conclusion.
it stands tonight. but first, let s briefly recap the whiplash that we ve gone through over the past few days. on friday, at the moment that the senate judiciary committee was expected to vote quickly along party lines to advance kavanaugh s nomination, the process was suddenly thrown into disarray when republican senator jeff flake made an unexpected last-minute deal with the committee democrats to secure a one-week delay in the full senate vote, during which the fbi would look into dr. ford s allegations and possibly into other allegations, too. it was not really clear at the time. later that day, we learned that the white house had indeed ordered the fbi to reopen kavanaugh s background investigation. but on saturday, nbc news was first to report that the white house had sharply limited the scope of the fbi s investigation, telling the fbi it could investigate christine blasey ford s claims and those of deborah ramirez, who has publicly accused brett kavanaugh of shoving his genital
argument at the end of the week. so soon, i ll expect that we ll hear that the conclusions of the expert prosecutor who questioned both witnesses at last week s hearing aren t reliable, or what the fbi s investigation was not infinite or endless enough for their liking. maybe we ll hear the real issue is not these uncorroborated allegations of misconduct after all but rather the fact that judge kavanaugh now listen to this drank beer in high school and in college. well, now that you mention it, the drinking is, in fact, a major sticking point for a lot of people, and not just senate democrats. several of kavanaugh s college classmates have come forward to allege that he was a heavy, sloppy drinker in college. and no, the issue is not whether or not kavanaugh drank a lot in his youth, something that pretty much everyone including the senate democrats appear willing to forgive. it s that they claim he has
i do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18 or even a 21-year-old should condemn a person for the rest of his life, but, quote, i can unequivocally say that denying the possibility that he ever blacked out from drinking and in downplaying the degree and frequency of his drinking, brett has not told the truth. chad ludington ended his statement by saying he would, quote, take my information to the fbi. and that brings us to the first bit of late-breaking news tonight, something that may give us a bit of the window into the scope of the fbi information now that the restrictions have been ostensibly been taken off by the white house. that altercation that mr. ludington described in which brett kavanaugh allegedly threw a beer at someone and started a fight, well, tonight the new york times reports that there is indeed a police report documenting that incident and judge kavanaugh s involvement. quote, the incident which occurred in september 1985 during mr