these are the potential lies, and information supporting

Posted on: September 16, 2019 at 11:57:22 CT

there were lies.

And, it still isn’t clear what was Sotomoyer’s lie.

Kavanaugh’s truthfulness has repeatedly come into question
Even before Saturday’s report, there were a lot of discrepancies in Kavanaugh’s story — especially when it came to Ramirez’s allegation.

During the confirmation process, an NBC report detailed communication between Kavanaugh, his team, and college friends to rebut Deborah Ramirez’s claim that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale, before she had come forward with allegations in an article in the New Yorker.

NBC’s reporting was in direct contradiction to Kavanaugh’s testimony, in which he angrily denied the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct brought against him and said he learned of Ramirez’s claim through the original New Yorker story:

SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R-UT): When did you first hear of Ms. Ramirez’s allegations against you?

KAVANAUGH: … In the New Yorker.

HATCH: Did the ranking member [Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)] or any of her colleagues or any of their staffs ask you about Ms. Ramirez’s allegations before they were leaked to the press?

KAVANAUGH: No.

However, two friends of Kavanaugh’s — Kerry Berchem and Karen Yarasavage — were in contact with the Supreme Court nominee and his team, according to text messages obtained by NBC:

In a series of texts before the publication of the New Yorker story, Yarasavage wrote that she had been in contact with “Brett’s guy,” and also with “Brett,” who wanted her to go on the record to refute Ramirez. According to Berchem, Yarasavage also told her friend that she turned over a copy of the wedding party photo to Kavanaugh, writing in a text: “I had to send it to Brett’s team too.”
In an interview with Republican congressional staff two days after Ramirez went public, Kavanaugh said he had “heard about” Ramirez calling college friends about the alleged incident. It’s not clear if he had heard about that after the allegations went public.

These text messages detailing Kavanaugh’s knowledge of Ramirez’s allegations aren’t the first time his truthfulness has come into question. Here are five other instances where discrepancies in Kavanaugh’s testimonies have been raised.

1) Kavanaugh’s drinking: The Supreme Court nominee has been adamant that while he enjoys beer and perhaps at time drank “too many,” it was never to the point of passing out, blacking out, or even causing slight lapses in memory.

His characterization of drinking has been denied by multiple friends and past roommates, as Vox’s Emily Stewart explained. He grew “belligerent and aggressive” as a drunk, according to Chad Ludington, one of Kavanaugh’s former classmates.

Liz Swisher, another former Yale classmate, recounted to CNN of Kavanaugh’s drinking: “There’s no problem with drinking beer in college. The problem is lying about it.”

2) His yearbook: During the testimony about the sexual allegations, Democrats asked Kavanaugh to define several lines in his yearbook, which appeared to reference sexual activities. As Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos explained, the word “boof,” a slang term that many have defined to mean anal sex, Kavanaugh defined as “flatulence.”

While he and other classmates admitted the yearbook was full of exaggerations, those definitions Kavanaugh provided under oath didn’t hold up with classmates at Georgetown Prep, as the New York Times’s David Enrich reported:


3) Kavanaugh’s involvement in the nomination of a controversial anti-Roe v. Wade judge: In 2004, Kavanaugh said he did not “personally” handle the nomination of Judge William Pryor, who currently sits on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers Alabama, Georgia, and Florida) and is somewhat of a liberal bogeyman, famously calling Roe v. Wade and the legal right to abortion ”the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.”

Kavanaugh, who worked in Bush’s White House counsel office in the early 2000s, distanced himself from Pryor’s nomination in 2004, saying during his own confirmation hearing, “No, I was not involved in handling his nomination.” But as the Washington Post’s Seung Min Kim first reported, between 2002 and 2003, Kavanaugh is included in several emails referencing the Pryor nomination. In one exchange between Kavanaugh and White House aide Kyle Sampson, Kavanaugh is asked: “How did the Pryor interview go?” He responded, “Call me.” In another email chain, Kavanaugh is included in a conversation about a conference call to “coordinate plans and efforts” around Pryor
4) There’s also the case of the improperly obtained Democratic files, detailing strategies for opposing Bush’s judicial nominees in the 2000s, which a Republican Senate aide circulated with White House staff.

In 2004, Kavanaugh claimed that he had never seen “any documents that appeared ... to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” But as Vox’s Dylan Matthews explained, an email between the Republican staffer and Kavanaugh showed him receiving some of the documents.

5) Democrats have also tried to interrogate Kavanaugh’s possible involvement in the Bush administration torture policy. As Vox’s Li Zhou explained, in 2006 Kavanaugh said, “I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants … and so I do not have the involvement with that.” However, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) cited two news reports that said Kavanaugh was present at a meeting on whether US enemy combatants should be given lawyers while they are being detained.