Two women who say they dated Kavanaugh issue statement defending him
Two women who say they dated Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and have known him since high school are vouching for his character following sexual misconduct allegations against him.
The two women, who both say they knew Kavanaugh in high school, say the allegations against him do not sound like the man they knew.
{mosads}”Brett Kavanaugh and I have been good friends since high school,” Maura Fitzgerald said in a statement disseminated by the conservative public relations firm CRC Public Relations. “I dated him in college and he was and is nothing like the person who has been described.”
“He always conducted himself honorably with me at all times when we were together,” Fitzgerald added. “He was always a perfect gentleman, and I vouch for him completely.”
Another woman who dated Kavanaugh described him as “respectful, kind and thoughtful.”
The statements come one day after Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor, publicly accused Kavanaugh of holding her down on a bed and groping her at a party when the two attended neighboring high schools in the 1980s.
Ford alleges that Kavanaugh held her down and tried to take off her clothes, at one point holding his hand over her mouth to silence her screaming.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford told the Post on Sunday. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Ford is alleging the incident has caused her emotional trauma over the past several decades, a claim backed up by notes from her therapist that she provided to The Washington Post.
Ford’s allegations came to light last week when it was reported that Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) had forwarded a sexual misconduct allegation against Kavanaugh to the FBI. The letter’s allegations, published by The New Yorker, were attributed to an unidentified woman.
Before Ford publicly identified herself, 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh in high school signed onto a letter attesting to the nominee’s “character and integrity.”
Alumnae of Ford’s high school, including actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, are circulating a letter to show their support for her.
“We believe Dr. Blasey Ford and are grateful that she came forward to tell her story,” reads a draft letter from alumnae of Holton-Arms, a private girls school in Bethesda, Md.
The letter, which has been signed by hundreds of Holton-Arms alumnae from classes of 1967 through 2018, asserts that Ford’s allegations about Kavanaugh are “all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton.”
Kavanaugh has fiercely denied Ford’s account and Trump on Monday called his Supreme Court pick one of the “finest people that anybody has known.”
A growing number of lawmakers are pushing to postpone Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee vote on the nominee to allow him and his accuser to testify before the panel.
CRC Public Relations, a Virginia-based firm, has backed Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court since he was announced as the pick by Trump.
The firm previously coordinated a campaign emphasizing the number of female clerks Kavanaugh has hired over the years.