Michael Avenatti Client Julie Swetnick Becomes Third Kavanaugh Accuser

By Joanna Walters, Guardian UK

26 September 18

Michael Avenatti tweeted a declaration made in the name of Julie Swetnick accusing supreme court pick of sexual misconduct

third woman has come forward to accuse Donald Trump’s supreme court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, of sexual misconduct, according to a statement published on Wednesday by her lawyer Michael Avenatti.

Avenatti tweeted a declaration made in the name of Julie Swetnick, a resident of Washington DC, which said she had met Kavanaugh and his school friend Mark Judge in the early 1980s and attended the same parties.

The declaration said she had “observed Brett Kavanaugh drink excessively at these parties and engage in abusive and physically aggressive behaviour towards girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, ‘grinding’ against girls and attempting to remove or shift girls clothing to expose private body parts”.

Swetnick said she was at parties where Kavanaugh and his friend Judge were involved in situations that resulted in women being gang raped.

She wrote: “I witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys…”

“In approximately 1982, I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”

Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual misconduct by two other women. He denies the allegations. He is due at a public hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to answer allegations from the first of the three women who have now accused him of sexual assault or misconduct in the past, California professor Christine Blasey Ford.

Swetnick declares that she is a graduate of Gaithersburg high school in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and that she currently holds government security clearances “associated with working within the federal government”, involving the US Department of Treasury, the US Mint and the Internal Revenue Service. She says she previously held clearances with the departments of state, justice, homeland security and customs and border protection.

Swetnick says she met Kavanaugh and a friend of his, Mark Judge, whom Kavanaugh’s original accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, says was the third person in the room when supreme court nominee sexually assaulted her when they were in high school – which both Kavanaugh and Judge have denied.

But she said in her statement that: “There is no question in my mind that Mark Judge has significant information concerning the conduct of Brett Kavanaugh during the 1980s, especially as it relates to his actions towards women.

Swetnick added that: “I attended well over 10 house parties in the Washington DC, area during the years 1981-1983 where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.

“I have reviewed Brett Kavanaugh’s recent claim on Fox News regarding his alleged ‘innocence’ during his high school years and lack of sexual activity. This claim is absolutely false and a lie. I witnessed Brett Kavanaugh consistently engage in excessive drinking and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women during the early 1980s,” she stated.

Avenatti revealed at the weekend that he was representing a women who was going to come forward to detail misconduct by Kavanaugh, and he sent pointed questions to the Senate that he said they should ask Kavanaugh, which included detailed references to gang rape at parties and young men lining up in a “train” to use a woman for sex.

“In approximately 1982, I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present. Shortly after the incident, I shared what had transpired with at least two other people. During this incident, I was incapacitated without my consent and unable to fight off boys raping me. I believe I was drugged using Quaaludes or something similar placed in what I was drinking.”

Judge has disappeared from the public eye in recent weeks. However, the Washington Post tracked him down to a beach house in Bethany Beach, Maryland, where he was apparently staying with a friend.

“How’d you find me?” he told the newspaper’s reporter before declining to comment any further.

Swetnick, 55, has since 2009 been registered as the owner of the company International Building Solutions in Bethesda, Maryland, according to public records.

A 2007 report in a New Jersey newspaper, in which she was quoted as a member of the public preparing for that year’s Super Bowl, said she then worked for New York Life, the insurance company.

Swetnick registered as a nonaffiliated voter in Washington DC in 2014 and voted in the 2016 general election.Court filings in the capital say that she was chased by the IRS for about $40,000 outstanding federal taxes in October last year, but had paid the debt by March this year.