The new allegations against Brett Kavanaugh are striking for two reasons: 1) they are far, far more depraved than any of the others, and, 2) they have been affirmed under sworn oath and penalty of perjury. Those two factors up the ante significantly.
As I see it, there are three possibilities:
First, that Julie Swetnick, Kavanaugh’s latest accuser, is lying. That is a possibility. Of course, when it comes to sworn testimony, we should give people the benefit of the doubt. Oaths are meant to underscore the seriousness of a claim, and they add some (though by no means total) legitimacy to what would otherwise just be a normal statement. Just the same, some people lie under oath. Perjury is real. Bill Clinton committed it when he was president. It happens.
The second possibility is that Swetnick is mistaken. She may have attended these alleged gang-rape parties but mistook Kavanaugh for someone else, or mistook someone else’s actions for Kavanaugh’s. This, to me, seems unlikely. If you’re making allegations of this magnitude and import, if you witnessed such inhuman, psychopathic depravity on a regular basis, as Swetnick claims, then you’ll probably remember key details, such as who was doing the drugging and gang raping. Of the three possibilities, this seems the least likely. She’s either lying or she’s telling the truth.
The last possibility, of course, is that Swetnick is telling the truth. This is wholly within the realm of possibility. It’s not impossible that Brett Kavanaugh was a genuinely evil, perverted, sociopathic rapist when he was 15 years old. After all, Swetnick made these allegations under oath.
Just the same, Swetnick is making an absolutely extraordinary claim here. We are being asked to believe:
1) There were multiple youth house parties in the same area in the 1980s at which mass gang rapes were taking place on a regular basis; the accuser herself was fully aware of this insanely evil and depraved rape cult and yet continued to attend these parties, apparently not warning anyone about it in the process.
2) Nobody in the past three decades has ever gone public with any smidge of an allegation or allusion about these war-crime-style rapefests happening at crowded parties in a crowded city in an age of mass media; they’ve only just been revealed on the eve of a critical Senate vote.
3) The FBI apparently uncovered absolutely nothing about these rape parties during one of the six previous background checks it conducted on Kavanaugh.
4) That Brett Kavanaugh himself, who has given absolutely every indication of being at worst a normal decent man for his entire life, was an enthusiastic participant in these rape plots.
This is, again, not at all outside the realm of possibility — but it is an insanely tall order. We need a whole, whole, whole lot more evidence to be convinced that Swetnick didn’t engage in an extraordinary act of perjury here. Whether or not that involves an FBI investigation, in addition to the six they’ve already run, or something else, I’m not sure.
Given the Democrats’ transparently political weaponization of these sexual assault claims, I’m fine with the committee moving forward and voting him through; I have no interest in rewarding the cynical, rape-exploiting tactics of congressional liberals, and neither should you. If there is to be an investigation, and if it uncovers actual criminal activity of the likes described by the accusers, it can (and should) result in Kavanaugh’s impeachment at a later date.
If you have complaints about that, direct them toward Senate Democrats, who have remained silent about multiple sexual assault claims and exploited the vulnerability and apparent anguish of alleged sexual assault victims in order to destroy a Supreme Court nominee they don’t like.
Daniel Payne is a writer based in Virginia. He is an assistant editor for the College Fix, the news magazine of the Student Free Press Association. He blogs at Trial of the Century.
