The New York Times fact-checked his testimony, and what emerges is the image of a skilled lawyer who dissembled when pressed on certain accusations.
On Thursday, the adolescent jottings of Brett M. Kavanaugh in his high school yearbook were being scrutinized under the searing lights of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, where he sat accused of committing a drunken sexual assault when he was 17.
The faded references to heavy drinking and sexual pursuits had taken on evidentiary significance, and he was pressed by senators to acknowledge their meaning. Judge Kavanaugh instead offered benign alternative explanations — an apparent reference to throwing up from drinking could have referred to spicy foods upsetting his stomach, he said.
So it went for hours, as Judge Kavanaugh mounted an emotional defense against allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking. It was the second time he had testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first being earlier in September when he was asked mostly about his legal career.
The New York Times fact-checked his testimony, comparing his statements against the recollections of former classmates and acquaintances from his youth, as well as records from his time working in the administration of George W. Bush.
The combative nominee was compelled to answer questions he clearly found embarrassing or offensive. What emerges is the image of a skilled lawyer who, when pressed on difficult subjects, sometimes crafted responses that were misleading, disputed or off point. When asked about his alcohol consumption in high school, he said his classmates were “legal to drink” in their senior year, even though the legality of the drinking was not the issue (and, in fact, he could not legally drink because the age was raised to 21 before he even turned 18).
It was a performance that evolved with the increasingly fraught tenor of the proceedings. At his first hearing, Judge Kavanaugh, a Yale Law School graduate, fielded questions on policy and political work in the bland, studiously noncontroversial tradition of nominees to the high court. Still, even then some answers raised flags, as when he claimed not to know or suspect that internal Democratic documents about judicial nominations, shared with him when he worked in the Bush administration, had been stolen from Democrats’ computers.
But Thursday’s hearing sharpened the focus on a nominee in a way not seen since the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings of 1991. As in that earlier case, seemingly small details suddenly loomed large in importance.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, reminded Judge Kavanaugh that juries were routinely instructed that they can “disbelieve a witness if they find them to be false in one thing.”
“So the core of why we’re here today really is credibility,” he said.
Judge Kavanaugh repeatedly testified that three people had exonerated him of Christine Blasey Ford ’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her during a gathering of teenagers outside Washington in the summer of 1982. “Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a longtime friend of hers,” he said on Thursday, punctuating his statement with an extra “refuted.”
While it is true that the three people did not corroborate Dr. Blasey’s account, they did not “refute” it either. Dr. Blasey had said that two of them were in the house, and one of them was in the room at the time of the alleged assault.
All three said they did not recall the gathering, and two of them — friends of Judge Kavanaugh’s — said they had not, in general, seen him act in an aggressive manner.
Leland Keyser, a longtime friend of Dr. Blasey’s, submitted a short statement through her lawyer saying that she did not know Judge Kavanaugh and had “no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”
Aside from her lack of recollections, Ms. Keyser separately told The Washington Post that she believed Dr. Blasey’s account, the newspaper reported.
During the hearing, Dr. Blasey said she did not expect that Ms. Keyser would remember the gathering because it was “a very unremarkable party” for her. She also noted that Ms. Keyser “has significant health challenges,” adding that “she let me know that she needed her lawyer to take care of this for her, and she texted me right afterward with an apology and good wishes.”
Dr. Blasey recalled Patrick Smyth, known as “P. J.,” as attending the gathering. But through his lawyer, Mr. Smyth issued a statement that he had “no knowledge” of the party or the allegations. Dr. Blasey testified that, like, Ms. Keyser, it was not surprising that Mr. Smyth would not have memories of the gathering.
Mark Judge was “a different story,” Dr. Blasey said. “I would expect that he would remember this happened.” Dr. Blasey accused Mr. Judge, a close friend and classmate of Judge Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Preparatory School, of being in the room during the alleged assault and jumping onto the bed.
In his statement to the committee, Mr. Judge, through his lawyer, wrote that he had “no memory of this alleged incident” and that he did “not recall the party described.”
Judge Kavanaugh portrayed himself in his testimony as enjoying a beer or two as a high school and college student, but not as someone who often drank to excess during those years. “I drank beer with my friends,” he said. “Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out,” he said.
His statements are at odds with how some of his classmates remembered him. In interviews before his testimony, nearly a dozen college classmates of Judge Kavanaugh’s said they recalled him indulging in heavy drinking, some saying it went beyond normal consumption. (To be sure, a smaller number of classmates said his drinking was unexceptional.)
Reached after the hearing, Lynne Brookes, an undergraduate classmate of Judge Kavanaugh’s at Yale University, said she believed he had “grossly misrepresented and mischaracterized his drinking.”
“He frequently drank to excess,” she said. “I know because I frequently drank to excess with him.”
Ms. Brookes was roommates with Deborah Ramirez, who told The New Yorker that Judge Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drinking game while they were students.
Like Judge Kavanaugh, Ms. Brookes, a Republican, was an athlete who went to a prestigious graduate school after Yale. She disputed the implication in his testimony that he could not have overindulged because he was too busy studying and competing in athletics. “It is completely possible to do both,” she said.
Another Yale classmate, Elizabeth Swisher, now a Seattle physician, said: “I drank a lot. Brett drank more.”
“I definitely saw him on multiple occasions stumbling drunk where he could not have rational control over his actions or clear recollection of them,” said Daniel Lavan, who lived in Mr. Kavanaugh’s dorm freshman year. “His depiction of himself is inaccurate.”
Judge Kavanaugh disputed such accounts, saying they did not point to specific instances. But his own recollections have offered clues about his drinking. His high school yearbook, for example, refers to him as the treasurer of the Keg City Club, noting “100 Kegs or Bust.” Multiple high school classmates, in interviews, described Judge Kavanaugh as a heavy and frequent drinker.
As an undergrad, he was affiliated with two organizations known for hard partying, including the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon.
He also recounted his own drinking exploits in speeches. In a 2014 address to Yale Law students, he recalled a night of “group chugs” in Boston that ended with his group “falling out of the bus onto the front steps of Yale Law School at about 4:45 a.m.”
A substantial portion of Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony was devoted to discussing his 1983 senior yearbook. In one entry, he described himself as a “ Renate Alumnius,” referring to Renate Schroeder, now Renate Dolphin, who attended a nearby Catholic school. A number of his football teammates had similar entries. Judge Kavanagh said: “That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media’s interpreted the term is related to sex. It was not related to sex.”
Four of Judge Kavanaugh’s former schoolmates, including Sean Hagan, said the notion that the phrase was meant affectionately did not ring true. They said that Judge Kavanaugh and his friends often made disrespectful sexual comments about Ms. Dolphin, and that the understanding at the time was that the many yearbook references to her were boasts about sexual conquests.
On Monday, Judge Kavanaugh’s lawyer told The Times that the “Renate Alumnius” note referred to a school event that he and Ms. Dolphin attended, after which they “ shared a brief kiss good night.” Ms. Dolphin responded that they had never kissed.
On Thursday, Judge Kavanaugh steered away from the idea that the yearbook reference had any sexual connotations. “We never had any sexual interaction,” he said.
After his testimony ended, Mr. Hagan wrote on Facebook: “So angry. So disgusted. So sad. Integrity? Character? Honesty?”
Judge Kavanaugh’s yearbook page included the entries “Judge — Have You Boofed Yet?” and “Devil’s Triangle.” On Thursday, he said that “boofed” meant “flatulence” and that “Devil’s Triangle” was a drinking game in which three glasses were arranged in a triangle.
