says it is just very strange that they would allow brett to reach out on his own. usually when there s nominations like this, they have a team of people to do it. they say it s bad pr and that they don t recommend that the nominee oouts itself do their o bidding. bercham wants to talk to the fbi and is hoping to be able to do that before the investigation closes by the end of this week. and do we have any way of knowing whether this was brett kavanaugh going back through his life and saying hmm, this might be something that happened that i need to clean up, let me have my friends reach out? or, whether this was a result of him being, you know, maybe reached out to for comment by the new yorker and maybe responding to that? is there any way he sort of knew this story might be coming? yeah, what we have we don t know. we don t know which it is. it could be either or. but we do know is that ramirez and kavanaugh, they knew each other more than what was previously reported. we did pu
said that he has been in touch with the fbi. and the other thing worth noting about this story tonight, chris dudley, the kavanaugh friend and classmate who was accused by a witness of throwing a glass and injuring another bar patron in this fight, an accusation he denies, chris dudley is one of two people who issued statements distributed by the white house today attesting to brett kavanaugh s character. in a statement today, chris dudley said that he and kavanaugh, quote, drank in college. i was with brett frequently in college, whether it be in the gym, in class or socializing. i never saw brett black out, not one time. and in all the years i ve known him, i ve never seen him to be disrespectful or inappropriate with women. i would also like to point out that going out never came before working hard and maintaining our focus on our goals. the person sometimes being described in the press is not the brett kavanaugh that i have known as a good friend for 35 years. all of which may be
brett kavanaugh. we have yet to hear back. but if the takeaway from the prosecutor who the republicans hired to do their questioning for them is that this is a hopeless matter of he said/she said, is that the only reasonable conclusion? might other prosecutors see it differently? and would a more thorough investigation possibly reach a different conclusion? joining us now is joyce vance, former u.s. attorney in alabama. great to have you here, joyce. hey, joy. let s go through a couple of things. thing number one, ms. mitchell says this is a hopeless case of he said/she said, and that a reasonable prosecutor would not have moved forward with a case based on what she saw at that hearing. do you, as a former prosecutor, agree? well, two things. first, this is not a he said/she said, at least as dr. ford teased this up. there are two hes in the room and, of course, dr. ford. and so, the first thing that i would do before making a pros cuive decision or a decision about whether to ch
conceal or discredit ramirez. kavanaugh told the judiciary committee under oath that the first time he heard about ramirez s allegation was in the september 23 article in the new yorker. and joining us now is nbc news political reporter leigh ann caldwell, one of the recorders on this brand-new story. leigh ann, thank you so much for join us. thank you, joy. how early do the text messages go back? do they go back to july? sure, joy. so what we ve seen we have not seen all of the text messages. we ve only seen the text messages that were outlined in this memo that kerry bercham wants to submit to the fbi. and this is again one more instance of someone who wants to talk to the fbi but hasn t been able to. she is part of a group of friends who went to yale undergrad with kavanaugh and ramirez. they re in the same group of people, and she says that she has reached out to the fbi three times an has not heard back. now that the fbi says that they re going to expand this
that s what i was doing in the summer of 1982. and you can see that reflected on several of the several of the entries. if a gathering like dr. ford has described had occurred, would you have documented that? yes, because i documented everything, those kinds of events, even small get toss. so on thursday, rachel mitchell was moving in on that july 1st timeline, and then judge kavanaugh steered away toward another date, and the prosecutor never got another turn. for some reason she was sidelined for the rest of the hearing. and in her assessment of dr. ford s allegations against kavanaugh, july 1st, 1982 does not get brought up at all. we have reached out to the office of judiciary committee chairman chuck grassley to ask if there is some other memo that rachel wrote specifically