On Kavanaugh, New York Times Moves From Ice Tossing to Keg Party Planning

October 3rd, 2018 5:09 PM

After its shattering "ice" expose on Brett Kavanaugh’s college concert-going days, Wednesday’s New York Times provided yet another bombshell revelation in the Kavanaugh controversy, we learn that in high school he helped organize a week at a beach condo over the summer.

This shocking development was solemnly reported by Kate Kelly and David Enrich and appeared in Wednesday’s paper: Letter From 1983 Offers Glimpse of Nominee’s High School Clique.” (NBC’s Megyn Kelly was not impressed with the Times' story on her show Wednesday morning, literally trashing it on camera.)

The beachfront property was rented, the guests were invited and an ever-organized Brett M. Kavanaugh had some advice for the seven Georgetown Preparatory School classmates who would be joining him for the weeklong escapade.

In a 1983 letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, the young Judge Kavanaugh warned his friends of the danger of eviction from an Ocean City, Md., condo. In a neatly written postscript, he added: Whoever arrived first at the condo should “warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go about 30 miles...”

More than three decades later, the elite, privileged high school world that Judge Kavanaugh inhabited is the focus of international attention. He has been accused of sexual assault during his time at Georgetown Prep -- claims that have delayed, and threatened to derail, his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Judge Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

....

With the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s background check into the judge reopened, two of his closest high school friends, Mark Judge and Patrick J. Smyth, have been interviewed by F.B.I. agents. Another, Tim Gaudette, was named in Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony as the host of a July 1982 gathering, around the time that Christine Blasey Ford says she was assaulted. Mr. Gaudette has hired a lawyer to represent him.

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The judge has said that he attended high school parties. “Sometimes I had too many beers,” he testified, adding that he has “cringed” at some of his behavior back then. But his public statements don’t fully capture the binge-drinking culture in which classmates say he was a core participant.

They didn’t hold back on the lurid details of....routine high school life in the suburbs in the 1980s.

Parties, in the backyards of classmates’ suburban homes when their parents were away, would often attract hundreds of students from nearby private schools, his classmates recall. Five or 10 kegs would be procured and, if all went as planned, drained by the end of the night.

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Four Georgetown Prep classmates said they saw Judge Kavanaugh and his friends partake in binge-drinking rituals many weekends in which other partygoers saw them inebriated, even having difficulty standing. Three of those classmates signed a July letter, along with more than 150 other alumni, that endorsed him for the Supreme Court.

The reporters kept rehashing the same well-known, admitted-to-information in slightly different ways, filling up a half-page of the print edition. Of Kavanaugh’s “closest friends” they write:

They played basketball and board games. They also drank.

At least Kelly and Enrich explained away one yearbook conspiracy theory about the actual meaning of one in-joke reference (hint: It doesn’t mean what porn lawyer Michael Avenatti, who represents the dubious accuser Julie Swetnick, claimed)"

When he drank, Mr. Garrett would stutter words that began with the letter F. It became such a joke that many football teammates, including Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Garrett himself, had “FFFFF” references in their personal yearbook pages. Mr. Garrett, now a middle-school teacher in Georgia, sometimes hosted gatherings, including one when the Washington Redskins won the 1983 Super Bowl. Classmates said some seniors were too hung over to attend school the next day.