No reason to think he only did it once...

Kavanaugh confirmation in renewed peril after second assault claim

In a statement the nominee made to The New Yorker and released by the White House, he called the allegation a ‘smear’ that ‘did not happen.’

By BURGESS EVERETT, ELANA SCHOR and NATASHA KORECKI

Brett Kavanaugh's prospects of being confirmed to the Supreme Court suffered another major setback on Sunday night when a second woman accused him of sexual assault decades ago, and a prominent lawyer took to Twitter claiming a third woman has "credible information" on the high court nominee.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are investigating another allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, according to The New Yorker. Deborah Ramirez, who is 53, told the magazine that when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale in the 1983-84 academic school year, she remembers that he “exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.”

Kavanaugh flatly denied the allegation, calling it a last-minute smear. But his confirmation now appears to be in serious doubt. Most Senate Republicans had vowed to push forward with his nomination after securing a Thursday hearing with Christine Blasey Ford, who went public a week ago with her allegation that Kavanaugh sexually attacked her at a high school party.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, wrote to Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Sunday night to ask for the "immediate postponement" of any further consideration of Kavanaugh's nomination and asked for Grassley to join her work with her to get the FBI to investigate the allegations against Kavanaugh.

Ford sent a letter directly to Grassley on Saturday, which she has consented for the committee to release, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The committee has yet to do so, but a Grassley aide said the senator would respond directly to her.

Importantly, Kavanaugh does not yet have the votes to be confirmed and several GOP senators are watching his reaction to the allegations closely. Privately, several Republicans said they were alarmed by the new allegations, but it was not yet clear whether the party will abandon Kavanaugh.

The GOP will wait to see the reaction of Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bob Corker of Tennessee to assess whether they can proceed, according to a person familiar with caucus politics.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted Friday his party would "plow right through" on Kavanaugh's confirmation. His office had no immediate comment on Sunday about the latest allegations against Kavanaugh.

Just as The New Yorker's story dropped, Michael Avenatti, a well-known Democratic lawyer, said he represents "a woman with credible information" about Kavanaugh and his high school friend Mark Judge, who Ford alleged was in the room with her and Kavanaugh at the time of the alleged assault. Avenatti posted on Twitter that he has "significant evidence" that Kavanaugh and Judge "would participate in the targeting of women with alcohol/drugs."

Avenatti told POLITICO he represents a group of individuals who can corroborate allegations involving Kavanaugh and his longtime friend in the 1980s.

Avenatti said he’d describe just one of the individuals as a victim.

“She will testify,” he said. “But before she does, she will likely appear on camera for an interview.”

He said the others were witnesses to the allegations. Avenatti would not elaborate on the number of clients but said he represents them alone.

“I represent multiple clients, they are witnesses. I’m representing multiple individuals that have knowledge of this, there’s no other attorneys involved,” Avenatti told POLITICO. Asked if the witnesses attended Georgetown Prep’s sister school, he said they went beyond that. “They went to schools in the same general areas. These house parties were widely attended.”

Avenatti said his new claims are "not out of character from what Dr. Ford said.”

While the White House defended Kavanaugh against the New Yorker report, Senate Republicans were laying low following the new claim of misconduct about Kavanaugh. Key Senate Republicans who are undecided on the nomination were mum Sunday night, as were GOP members on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who just finished wrapping up an agreement with Ford to testify later this week.

The New Yorker piece reported that Senate Republicans were aware of Ramirez's allegations. A Grassley spokesman said Sunday that Judiciary Republicans "learned of the allegations made by Deborah Ramirez against Judge Kavanaugh from this evening's New Yorker report," adding that neither Ramirez nor her representatives have contacted the chairman's office yet. Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), said his office was unaware of Ramirez's claims.

Now that Ramirez has gone public, however, Grassley's spokesman said the committee intends to look into her claims.

Democrats have been chattering the past week about the possibility that more women would come forward, and the White House has been preparing for that possibility. In a statement Kavanaugh made to The New Yorker and released by the White House, he called the allegation a “smear” that “did not happen.”

“The people who knew me then know that this did not happen, and have said so,” he said. "I look forward to testifying on Thursday about the truth, and defending my good name — and the reputation for character and integrity I have spent a lifetime building — against these last-minute allegations.”

White House spokeswoman Kerri Kupec echoed that language in a statement on Sunday night. Ramirez’s “35-year-old, uncorroborated claim,” she said, was simply “the latest in a coordinated smear campaign by the Democrats designed to tear down a good man.”

Kupec added: “This claim is denied by all who were said to be present and is wholly inconsistent with what many women and men who knew Judge Kavanaugh at the time in college say. The White House stands firmly behind Judge Kavanaugh.”

Ramirez asked that the FBI investigate the incident; Senate Republicans have declined to push for a similar investigation into Ford's actions. And opponents of Kavanaugh's called for his nomination to be either withdrawn or delayed until he is investigated fully.

"To state the obvious: taking sexual violence seriously requires investigating credible allegations such as these," said Fatima Goss Graves, who heads the National Women’s Law Center.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers asked Bennet's office for assistance should Ramirez decide to come forward. The office reached out to former Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, who worked with Ramirez on how to bring forward her allegation, the spokeswoman said. Feinstein's office said it was not involved in handling Ramirez's allegation before it became public.

Conservatives raged at the new accusation and information, which came just hours after the Senate finalized an agreement with Ford to testify on Thursday.

Carrie Severino, the chief counsel of the pro-Kavanaugh Judicial Crisis Network, said that the GOP needs to "stand up to these unsubstantiated and discredited allegations and move forward with a vote to confirm Kavanaugh."

The federal judge was already facing an accusation from Ford, who claims that Kavanaugh drunkenly forced himself on her at a house party in Maryland more than three decades ago. But the latest charge comes from Kavanaugh's time as a student at Yale University when he was an adult.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings earlier this month if he had ever committed "verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature" as an adult. Kavanaugh responded no.

The new report on Ramirez and Avenatti’s announcement came as Grassley released an unredacted version of the initial letter Ford sent to Feinstein in July, recounting her claim against Kavanaugh. Republicans have lambasted Feinstein for declining to share the letter before a media leak forced her hand, though the Democrat has pushed back by noting that Ford’s letter requested confidentiality.

Ford’s complete letter to Feinstein includes the details of her alleged assault “in a suburban Maryland home at a gathering that included me and 4 others.” She added that “I have not seen Kavanaugh since the assault” but did encounter Mark Judge, whom she alleges was the third person in the room at the time of the assault, at a local supermarket “where he was extremely uncomfortable seeing me.”

Democrats have pushed the GOP to subpoena Judge to testify at Thursday’s scheduled hearing; Judge has declined to speak and Republicans have no plans to compel him. Republicans have contacted two other individuals whom Ford reportedly told the Washington Post were in attendance at the party in question, and both were unable to corroborate her allegation.