A political figure getting questioned about a bar fight that results in no arrests might be news. A political figure that got questioned but not arrested by police 33 years ago for a bar fight because he allegedly threw ice? If the name is Kavanaugh, it’s news … for some reason. The New York Times broke the Flying Ice Story wide open last night:
As an undergraduate student at Yale, Brett M. Kavanaugh was involved in an altercation at a local bar during which he was accused of throwing ice on another patron, according to a police report.
The incident, which occurred in September 1985 during Mr. Kavanaugh’s junior year, resulted in Mr. Kavanaugh and four other men being questioned by the New Haven Police Department. Mr. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Mr. Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him “for some unknown reason.”
A witness to the fight said that Chris Dudley, a Yale basketball player who is friends with Mr. Kavanaugh, then threw a glass that hit the man in the ear, according to the police report, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Another student at the time, Chris Ludington, had spoken publicly of an incident involving Kavanaugh, police, and heavy drinking during their years at Yale. The Washington Post caught up with Ludington last night to get more of the story on the bar fight and Kavanaugh’s role in it, a role that apparently didn’t even interest police at the time enough to detain the future jurist. Ludington says he’s telling the FBI about it today after reaching out to them over the weekend:
On Sunday, Ludington said publicly that he intended to discuss the incident with FBI agents in Raleigh, N.C., where he is an associate professor at North Carolina State University. Agents soon contacted him, he said Monday night. They instructed him to file a request to be invited to provide testimony, then emailed him a questionnaire and told him to come in Tuesday. …
Last week, Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he drank but was never out of control. “I drank beer with my friends. 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 during his testimony.
Ludington told The Post that his recollection differed.
“I saw him quite drunk. There were certainly many times when he could not remember what was going on,” he said, adding that, “There’s an angry streak that comes out when Brett drinks.”
Obviously, this is what Ludington wants to get out into the public sphere — that when at Yale, he saw Brett Kavanaugh get angry-drunk. And … so? Kavanaugh has admitted already that he drank too much at times in both high school and college. Ludington claims to be offended that Kavanaugh has “mischaracterized the extent of his drinking at Yale,” as the New York Times puts it. The police report of a bar fight in which Kavanaugh was never charged or even detained is being offered as proof of that mischaracterization.
However, it doesn’t prove anything at all, except that Kavanaugh might have contributed to a bar fight. In 1985. At twenty years old. It’s not even clear from the report that Kavanaugh was drunk, let alone so drunk as to be in a blackout. One would presume that police would have detained Kavanaugh had that been the case, at least until he sobered up enough to be able to responsibly take care of himself.
Remember, the real purpose of all this discussion of Kavanaugh’s drinking isn’t whether it was excessive more than three decades ago. Democrats want to find evidence that Kavanaugh drank so much that he blacked out occasionally, in order to negate his forceful denials that he never attacked Christine Blasey Ford or anyone else. Put aside the fact that there’s no logical connection between the two anyway, or that one blackout somehow proves sexual assault; they haven’t even been able to show that Kavanaugh blacked out from drinking ever. And that leaves Kavanaugh’s categorical denials to stand against Ford’s vague, ambiguous, and changing allegation.
In fact, the one person in a prime position to know the most about Kavanaugh’s drinking and its impact says it never happened. Dan Murphy, Kavanaugh’s roommate at Yale, released a statement yesterday declaring that Kavanaugh never suffered blackouts, and that his drinking is getting exaggerated in the press:
“I never saw Brett black out or not be able to remember the prior evening’s events, nor did I ever see Brett act aggressive, hostile, or in a sexually aggressive manner to women,” Dan Murphy said in a statement Monday.
Democrats and the media have come up empty on the blackouts, so now we’re getting ice, ice, maybe instead. That’s what happens when you’re under pressure to find something, anything to derail a nominee you’ve pledged to wax like a candle, or something. Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know.
