Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday appeared to mock a report on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh being questioned over allegedly throwing ice during a college bar fight.
McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, said some of the attacks on Kavanaugh have been “trivial” and joked that The New York Times unleashed “a major story.”
{mosads}”Get this, Judge Kavanaugh may have been accused of throwing some ice across a college bar in the mid-1980s, in the mid-1980s. Talk about a bombshell,” McConnell said.
He added that “one can only imagine what new bombshell might be published today or tomorrow.”
The New York Times reported Monday that Kavanaugh was questioned about a bar fight by the New Haven Police Department when he was an undergraduate at Yale University.
Kavanaugh was not arrested, but was accused of throwing ice on someone for “some unknown reason,” according to the report obtained by the Times.
Kavanaugh did not want “to say if he threw the ice or not” when speaking with officers, according to the report.
Republicans and the White House have dismissed the report, noting that one of the Times reporters has been critical of Kavanaugh on Twitter.
But the report comes as Kavanaugh’s drinking has come under sharp scrutiny while senators weigh his nomination to the high court.
Kavanaugh repeatedly denied during last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing that he had ever blacked out from drinking too much alcohol. His denials came shortly after Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault, testified that he had sexually assaulted her at a party when the two were in high school in 1982. Ford testified that Kavanaugh was “visibly drunk” during the alleged assault.
McConnell reiterated during his floor speech that the Senate would hold a vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination this week.
Under the original one-week timeline, the FBI has until Friday to wrap up its investigation into multiple sexual assault and misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh.