Megyn Kelly and Michael Avenatti feuded Monday, with the NBC host criticizing Avenatti for not offering corroborating witnesses for Julie Swetnick, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.
Avenatti quickly fired back on Twitter saying that Kelly should be ashamed for “attacking a sexual assault victim.”
{mosads}Kelly suggested Swetnick, who in a sworn declaration last week said Kavanugh had attended parties in high school where gang rapes were common, had credibility issues.
“She faced her own accusations of misconduct at a Portland company years ago. That company claims she told them she graduated from Johns Hopkins but they learned the school had no record of her, she also falsely described her work experience,” Kelly said during a panel discussion on “Megyn Kelly Today.”
“She engaged in unwelcome, sexually offensive misconduct herself. They said she made false and retaliatory allegations against her co-workers that they had been inappropriate with her. They said she took medical leave and simultaneously claimed unemployment benefits. At the same time in D.C., there was a restraining order filed against her by an ex-boyfriend,” the former Fox News host also stated.
“If Avenatti’s got corroborating witnesses, where are they? It’s been a week and he hasn’t put a single one forward,” Kelly added later.
Avenatti responded on Twitter by stating Kelly was attacking his client based on the “bogus legal actions” of Swetnick’s former boyfriend.
Last week, Avenatti told CNN that it’s not his “obligation” to lay out “all the facts and all the evidence right now” regarding his client’s claims that Kavanaugh attended parties in high school where gang rapes occurred.
“She witnessed a lot of the conduct as it relates to what was going on in the back bedrooms and did not understand at the time the magnitude of what was transpiring in the back bedrooms until she was ultimately gang raped and drugged as she details in the declaration,” he said. “A lot of this would be substantiated if there was an investigation, which is what we want. We are not laying out all of the facts and all the evidence right now. That’s not our obligation.”
Earlier Monday on MSNBC, “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough compared Avenatti, who is floating a possible 2020 presidential run, to Lionel Hutz, a corrupt ambulance-chasing lawyer on Fox’s “The Simpsons.”
“He sounded like Lionel Hutz on ‘The Simpsons’ last night,” Scarborough said when speaking to MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt regarding her interview with Avenatti. “He was advertising his law firm on your show more than it seemed he was running for president, but we shall see.”