Third Kavanaugh Accuser Comes Forward, Alleges He Helped Orchestrate 'Train' Rapes

A third woman has come forward with damning allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, stating in a sworn affidavit that she not only witnessed him orchestrate and engage in group rapes at high school parties, but that she herself was one of the victims.

On Wednesday morning, attorney Michael Avenatti named 55-year-old Julie Swetnick—who has held multiple positions within the federal government—as the client he has been anonymously referencing over the past few days. Her affidavit, sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee, is now circulating on Twitter. It details a pattern of predatory, abusive behavior on Kavanaugh's part, as well as the methods Swetnick alleges she saw Kavanaugh and his buddies use to incapacitate young women "so they could be 'gang raped' in a side room or a bedroom by a 'train' of numerous boys." In addition to seeing her peers queue up in hallways at house party after house party, Swetnick says that around 1982, she "became the victim of one of these 'gang' or 'train' rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present."

At upwards of 10 parties between 1981 and 1983, Swetnick attests that she saw Kavanaugh—typically accompanied by his "joined at the hip" best friend, Mark Judge—drink excessively, and become physically and sexually aggressive toward the girls in attendance. The pair refused to "[take] 'No' for an answer," she recalls, adding that she saw Kavanaugh push women up against walls, and tried to "expose [their] private body parts," all without consent.

Swetnick also claimed that Kavanaugh regularly engaged in verbal abuse, "making crude sexual comments to [girls] that were designed to demean, humiliate, and embarrass them." At the same time, she noted, Kavanaugh and his cronies dumped drugs or booze into communal punch, plying girls with drinks in an effort to make them "lose their inhibitions and their ability to say 'no.'" Those girls, whom Swetnick believes Kavanaugh and company targeted because they seemed especially "vulnerable," often wound up violated behind closed doors; Swetnick knows this not only because she saw it, her affidavit explains, but because she experienced it firsthand.

"In approximately 1982," Swetnick believes someone slipped "Quaaludes or something similar" into her drink, leaving her "incapacitated without ... consent and unable to fight off the boys raping [her]." She adds that she subsequently told "at least two other people" what happened. Her affidavit does not explicitly say that Kavanaugh and Judge were among the men who raped her, but rather, that they were present at the time of her assault.

So far, Kavanaugh has unequivocally maintained his innocence, offering Senators a look at his high school calendar as evidence of his chastity.

On Wednesday, shortly after noon, The White House released this statement from Judge Kavanaugh on Swetnick's allegations: "This is ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I don't know who this is and this never happened."

Swetnick's statement shares parallels with allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford, who will testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, and Deborah Ramirez, who said Wednesday that she is willing to appear before Congress as well. On September 16, Blasey Ford reluctantly came forward as the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, telling the Washington Post that he and Judge attacked her at a D.C. house party when they were 17 and she was 15. The two boys, both "stumbling drunk," forced her into a bedroom, Kavanaugh clamping his hand over her mouth as he attempted to take off her clothes. Blasey Ford ultimately got away, but says at the time, "I thought [Kavanaugh] might inadvertently kill me."

The controversy surrounding Kavanaugh's nomination thickened when, one week later, Deborah Ramirez sat down with the New Yorker and shared how, when she and Kavanaugh were freshman at Yale, he exposed himself to her at a dorm party. She admits to being very drunk at the time, but nonetheless remembers lying on the floor with a circle of boys standing over her. Kavanaugh, she says, shoved his penis into her face, telling her to "kiss it" before she pushed him off. In a subsequent interview with Fox News, the nominee denied all of this, emphasizing that he does not recall attending parties like the ones Swetnick and Blasey Ford described, and further, that he stayed a virgin until well after high school. Even if his virgin status did somehow preclude the possibility that he'd forced himself on women without actually having sex with them, Swetnick's affidavit calls bullshit on the claim, calling it "absolutely false and a lie."

"I witnessed Brett Kavanaugh consistently engage in excessive drinking"—an assertion he has also denied—"and inappropriate contact of a sexual nature with women during the early 1980s," she says, adding that she has not a single doubt that Judge would be able to provide "significant information" about Kavanaugh's teenage days, "especially as it relates to his actions toward women."

We will update as this story develops.