Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz dismissed Wednesday the allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh brought forth by a woman represented by lawyer Michael Avenatti as being legal child’s play.
Julie Swetnick came forward earlier in the day to claim in an affidavit that at a number of parties during the early 1980s Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge spiked girls’ drinks to facilitate gang rape. She also alleged that she became the victim of one these “train” rapes and Kavanaugh and Judge were present.
Dershowitz said there needs to be a cross-examination of this woman, similar to what another accuser of Kavanaugh’s, Christine Blasey Ford, will face tomorrow in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“That affidavit is so deeply flawed and so open-ended that any good lawyer, any good defense attorney would be able to tear that apart in 30 seconds,” Dershowitz said on Fox News. “It’s an embarrassment to the law that anybody would file an affidavit like that filled with hearsay.”
He then went on to criticize the content of the affidavit, saying it was “filled with hearsay. Filled with, ‘Well, I was raped, but he didn’t rape me. He was there. He saw it. Where was he? There are witnesses. People told me. It happened ten times. I went back, I knew there were rapes going on but I went back to the party.'”
While he said this is the sort of “deeply flawed affidavit” he’d expect from Avenatti, who is representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her legal battle with President Trump, he doesn’t think there will be professional consequences for him.
In the affidavit, Swetnick said on numerous occasions at these parties she witnessed Kavanaugh and Judge “drink excessively and engage in highly inappropriate conduct, including being overly aggressive with girls and not taking ‘No’ for an answer.” She said this conduct included “the fondling and grabbing of girls without their consent.” Swetnick also said she “witnessed efforts” by Kavanaugh, Judge, and others “to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.” She also said she has a “firm recollection” of boys lined up outside of rooms at these parties “waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room,” and that Kavanaugh and Judge were among them.
Swetnick, who said she has had a number of government jobs and security clearances, claims she told two other people, whom she did not name, after the incident. She also said other women told her that Kavanaugh acted this way during “summer months” in Ocean City, Md. There are other witnesses that can attest to her allegations, she noted.
Both Kavanaugh and Judge have denied the allegation first unveiled by Avenatti earlier this week and Trump has declined to withdraw the nomination amid growing calls for him to do so by Democrats.
