Mark Judge, a writer who penned articles about Catholic sex abuse controversies and for conservative and other publications, including about his alcohol-fueled high school years, revealed to The Weekly Standard that he is the high school classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh who is accused of being a witness to what happened between Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford.
In his testimony on the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018, Kavanaugh called Judge a “funny guy, great writer” who struggled with addiction. On September 28, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the nomination to the full Senate on the condition (orchestrated by swing Republican vote Sen. Jeff Flake) that a limited FBI investigation be conducted over no more than a week’s time. Fox News then reported that Mark Judge has agreed to cooperate with the FBI in a confidential investigation. Judge has already given a statement to the Senate denying any knowledge of the party where Ford says she was assaulted, and he also categorically denied a second accusation in which he was named. In a staetement, Judge said he is a recovering alcoholic and cancer survivor who avoids public speaking due to anxiety and depression from those things.
New tonight: Mark Judge submits another letter to the Judiciary Committee, and signs it himself this time: “I do not recall the events described by Dr. Ford in her testimony before the US Senate Judiciary Committee today. I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes”
A controversial letter first alleged sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh against Ford in high school, an accusation which Kavanaugh has strenuously denied. In the interview with Weekly Standard, Judge also strongly denied the accusations. According to Weekly Standard’s John McCormack, who authored the article, Mark Judge is a writer in Washington D.C. Blasey Ford repeated her accusations against Kavanaugh and Ford in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
GettyChristine Ford.
During her testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018, Blasey Ford testified that her strongest memory was Kavanaugh and Judge, who she said were drunk, laughing at her.
“Strongest memory you have … something you cannot forget?”
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford: “The laughter … the uproarious laughter between the two and they’re having fun at my expense.”
#KavanaughHearings t.co/Ky2rPVrSq9 #ChristineBlaseyFord #SexAbuse #MarkJudge #FBI
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two and they’re having fun at my expense,” she said, adding, “I was underneath one of them, while the two laughed. Two friends having a really good time with one another.”
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford on seeing Mark Judge 6-8 weeks after alleged sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh: “I said help to him and his face was white.” t.co/g6zGUT60wM #KavanaughHearings
She said she saw Judge at a supermarket where he worked a few weeks after the alleged attack and claimed he looked “ill.”
Judge has previously denied the accusations.
“It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way,” Judge told the Weekly Standard of the Kavanaugh accusations when they first publicly emerged. Judge essentially repeated that stance in a letter sent by his lawyer to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 18, 2018, which you can read in full later in this article. (Patrick J. Smyth, who says in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Ford has claimed he was also at the party, has denied any knowledge of the party or misbehavior by Kavanaugh, as has a woman identified as possibly being at the party named Leland Keyer. You can read what Smyth said here.)
Blasey Ford is a Palo Alto University professor and a registered Democrat and donor. She accuses Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed and groping her. The Washington Post alleged: “Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling.”
As the alleged third person in the room in an allegation now at the center of a hotly contested Supreme Court nomination, Mark Judge’s high school recollections have suddenly become of national importance.
Judge revealed on September 9, 2018 on Facebook that he was receiving inquiries from editors about “high school and the 80s.” He’s written in the past about beer-fueled parties in the 1980s, about alcoholism, and has been sharply critical of Barack and Michelle Obama – along with many other topics. He also wrote on Facebook that he kept a diary from the 1980s.
Mark Judge has now deleted his Facebook and Twitter accounts. However, you can see screenshots of some of his Facebook posts later in this article. Democrats are pressuring Republicans to ask him to testify at a public hearing on September 24, 2018; Ford and Kavanaugh are already scheduled to appear. His lawyer has now told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Judge does not want to testify.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Mark Judge Says He Has No Memory of the Alleged Party in Question & Doesn’t Want to Testify
Mark Judge
Barbara Van Gelder, the lawyer for Mark Judge, wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which said Mark Judge doesn’t want to testify. The letter explains that Judge has nothing to offer the committee because he can’t remember the party in question and never saw Kavanaugh act as described. It reads:
I did not ask to be involved in this matter nor did anyone ask me to be involved. The only reason I am involved is because Dr. Christine Blasey Ford remembers me as the other person in the room during the alleged assault.
In fact, I have no memory of this alleged incident. Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.
I have no more information to offer the Committee and I do not wish to speak publicly regarding the incidents described in Dr. Ford’s letter.
Here is the letter in full:
Senator Lindsey Graham told The Washington Post that he didn’t think it was necessary for Judge to testify; some Democrats think he should be subponaed to give his story. At the hearing on September 27, Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said, “The FBI should have investigated your charges as they did in the Anita Hill hearing, but they did not. Mark Judge should be subpoenaed from his Bethany Beach hideaway and required to testify under oath, but he has not.” The Washington Post previously reported that Judge was in Bethany Beach, Delaware at his attorney’s suggestion to escape the stress of the situation.
The New Yorker Magazine, in a story by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, revealed more details about the mystery letter after news of it first broke when Feinstein referred the information to the FBI (which did not open an investigation.)
This was followed by the interview that Blasey Ford gave to The Washington Post. Her full letter subsequently was published. You can read it here. The letter, as published by CNN, does not reveal the third party’s name. It reads in part: “Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980s. He conducted these acts with the assistance of REDACTED.”
The Ford letter continues: “The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.”
Feinstein had initially released a statement, but it said only, “I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.” She has been criticized by some fellow Democrats for unilaterally deciding not to reveal the letter’s existence earlier.
The letter published by CNN has more detail about Mark Judge’s alleged role than the Post story: t.co/nVwtRHlZEh
In the New Yorker article, the authors allege that the letter’s writer contacted Feinstein and another Democratic lawmaker this summer and accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct that dates back more than 30 years. The Weekly Standard says that Judge was named in that letter, which he told the outlet he did not know until writer Ronan Farrow contacted him.
The New Yorker story did not name Blasey Ford or Judge. It does quote Judge, without name, as saying, “I have no recollection of that.”
GettyUS Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh arrives on the first day of his confirmation hearing in front of the US Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, on September 4, 2018.
Kavanaugh issued a statement in which he said, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.” Judge did not return a request from Heavy for comment.
In the interview with Weekly Standard, Judge said he could not even remember an incident that could be misconstrued in the way the New Yorker says the letter alleges. “I don’t remember any of that stuff going on with girls,” Judge told Weekly Standard, adding that the New Yorker didn’t provide him many details.
Mark Judge, referred to in letter as being in room with Kavanaugh and accuser at the time: “I can recall a lot of rough-housing with guys. It was an all-boys school, we would rough-house with each other,” he said . “I don’t remember any of that stuff going on with girls.”
On September 23, 2018, the New Yorker published a second alleged account of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, which he also denies, dating to college. That allegation by a woman named Deborah Ramirez did not involve Judge, but the story included a separate allegation from a former girlfriend contradicting Judge’s comment to Weekly Standard that “I can recall a lot of rough-housing with guys. I don’t remember any of that stuff going on with girls.” Elizabeth Rasor alleged Judge “had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman” that he regarded as consensual, but she said Judge didn’t name the other males involved. Judge’s attorney told The New Yorker that Judge categorically denies Rasor’s story.
One more flag from the New Yorker piece: Elizabeth Rasor, who dated Mark Judge for about three years, said that she felt morally obligated to challenge his account that “‘no horseplay’ took place at Georgetown Prep with women.” t.co/ZpAoaEuNIf
Michael Avenatti, the attorney for Stormy Daniels, then made allegations against Kavanaugh and Judge on Twitter.
My e-mail of moments ago with Mike Davis, Chief Counsel for Nominations for U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. We demand that this process be thorough, open and fair, which is what the American public deserves. It must not be rushed and evidence/witnesses must not be hidden.
Avenatti revealed the name of a third accuser – Julie Swetnick – on September 26, 2018. She is accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge of taking part in gang rapes, including one that she was a victim of, when they were in high school in the 1980s. Both Judge and Kavanaugh deny this account too.
Judge sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee categorically denying the Swetnick accusations.
Mark Judge sends another letter to Senate Judiciary Committee, this one on the Julie Swetnick matter:
The White House has criticized the last-minute allegation as a desperate move by Democrats seeking to derail President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh to the court.
Judge told The New York Times: “I never saw anything like what was described,” adding of Kavanaugh, “It is not who he is.” He described Kavanaugh to The Times as a “brilliant student,” whowas not “into anything crazy or illegal.”
2. Judge Wrote on Facebook That He Met Brett Kavanaugh at ‘Beach Week’ in 1981; He’s Written for Conservative Publications, Among Others
A post on Mark Judge’s Facebook page.
On Facebook, Mark Judge has shared some information about Brett Kavanaugh. “He had the same haircut on the night I met him (at Beach Week) in 1981. I mean, the exact same haircut,” he wrote in July 2018, with a share of a New York Times story that declared that Kavanaugh’s law students had praised Kavanaugh as a law professor, including saying nice things about his hair.
Judge recently shared (before the controversy broke) an article by another author at the conservative site Hot Air that was headlined “Please, For the Love of God Let This Be the Last Supreme Court Nomination Hearing.” The article criticizes Democrats’ handling of the Kavanaugh nomination process.
A biography page shows that Mark Judge has himself written articles for the conservative publication The American Spectator (among many other places that his work has appeared.)
Judge has written pretty extensively about his high school years being filled with tales of alcohol.
For example, Judge wrote a book called Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk. The book blurb on Amazon reads, “The author recounts his own struggle against alcoholism, and describes his research into the causes of addiction and the history of treatment and recovery.”
The Amazon description continues:
With a touch of dark humor, Mark Judge takes the reader on a 12-step journey through his experience as a teenage alcoholic and the revelations that led to his recovery. This coming-of-age memoir is presented from the perspective of an ‘ordinary’ kid who grew up in a small town outside Washington, D.C., attended Catholic school, and experimented with alcohol in a fairly typical way. What is atypical is where the experimentation led. While his drunken acts first appear as little more than adolescent antics and harmless pranks, it slowly becomes apparent that there is a serious problem lurking behind the laughs and half-racks. After a series of events leads him into depression, humiliation, and confusion, Judge discovers both Alcoholics Anonymous and Milan Recovery, launching the narrative into a history of the programs and their respective pros and cons, the physiological roots of alcoholism, and the various misnomers related to the disease. In relating his experiences, Judge relies on his skills as a journalist to track the causes of addiction and the effectiveness of traditional recovery techniques while maintaining a deeply personal, though often cynical, tone.
According to the book, Judge described “his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school, renamed in the book ‘Loyola Prep.'” Although Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, according to The Post, a reference about a beach party references “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.”
A 2009 article by Mark Judge on American Spectator’s website starts, “The decline of the mainstream media is not only a matter of liberal bias, but of linguistics. The dinosaur media is losing readers because it is full of bad writers.”
On September 5, he shared this article which ran on the Liberty Magazine website (and which is now deleted) with a Mark Judge byline about a beer-fueled 1985 party. Judge wrote on Facebook with the article share: “Just got a bit of a jolt from a high school buddy who just called me. This is (mostly) fiction, bro. Nothing to worry about.” The article uses the header “1985” and quotes a friend called Chris as saying of a woman, “She can only have an orgasm with a Republican” among other things.
The article then quotes Chris as saying, “I bet she’s got a great p*ssy. Just a sweet, tasty, real woman lady p*ssy. A Hollywood p*ssy. A cosmic girl p*ssy.”
The article describes a scene at the third week of “beach week,” saying, “We had a ‘T & A’ party and invited the girls from Trinity and St. Anne’s. We’d lie about having a serious chaperone, and they would then lie to their chaperones about it…Chris and I did a line of cocaine in the car.” It describes discussions about hookers and females’ attributes. “We talk and drank, and the party got louder and wilder. People paired off, Mueller and Walsh were wrestling with each other in a fight over the music, and a bottle got broken,” it continues.
On September 2, 2018, Judge shared the same article and wrote “based on a true story.” You can see that screenshot at the top of this fact section. Judge has since deleted it.
A previous version contained the byline Hartley Kane. It, too, no longer appears on the Liberty Island page.
Judge also had a YouTube page that is now deleted. One video focused in part on a woman.
In another Facebook post, he weighed in on an article reporting that people were threatening to boycott the New Yorker because Steve Bannon was going to headline a festival, writing, “It’s deeply sad what chickenshit babies we’ve become. David Remnick is a very good liberal journalist. Bannon has some odd ideas but was crucial in the 2016 election. I want to hear the conversation, as I would if Louis Farrakhan were being interviewed. Any student of history or politics would be curious about this. Grow. Up.”
3. Judge Criticized the Actions of Some ‘Homosexual Priests’; His High School Years Were Described as Wild
A now deleted post from Mark Judge’s Facebook page.
A biography for Judge defines him as “a journalist and filmmaker whose writings have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Caller. His books include Damn Senators: My Grandfather and the Story of Washington’s Only World Series Championship and A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” He also wrote a book called, God and Man at Georgetown Prep: How I Became a Catholic Despite 20 Years of Catholic Schooling.
That book blurb reads, “In this account, the author explores the role of Catholicism in Catholic institutions, presenting three Catholic universities and discussing their lack of religious conviction, arguing for more Catholic theological education and less secularism.”
On Twitter, where his tweets were privatized before he deleted the account, Judge defined himself as “Writer for the Acculturated, author of A Tremor of Bliss, filmmaker. From the Church to cheesecake and back.”
On Facebook, he writes as his profile, “Worked at Catholic (church). Lives in Washington, District of Columbia. From Washington, District of Columbia.”
However, his page shows an interest in criticism of the Catholic Church over its handling of priest sex abuse. For example, he recently shared an USA Today article by another author that reads, “Catholics, keep your wallets closed until the Church reforms from the Vatican on down.”
He wrote on Facebook: “Disgusted by both the liberal media and the conservative press (no reporters, just pundits), I realized that between my book and the articles I wrote exposing sexual abuse – work that goes back at least to 2005 – I was, as my friend here implies, way ahead on this, and deserved much better treatment by media organizations both left and right, which share a common cowardice and laziness when when it comes to this stuff.”
Judge authored an article for Splice Today that reads, “For years there’s been a problem with liberal and homosexual priests in the Catholic Church trying to change doctrine. Their personal behavior has often put young male students at risk for sexual abuse.”
The article references Georgetown Prep and calls “most of us… horny young guys” during that time. Specifically, it says, “A way through the current controversy is to simply fall back to the position that most people at Georgetown Prep had when I was there. We knew there were gay priests—a lot—but didn’t think they, or homosexuals in general, were going to hell. It was an unstated agreement. After all, most of us were horny young guys and when the girls at Stone Ridge, Holy Child, and Georgetown Visitation gave the thumbs down, we sometimes found that release by going it alone.”
Judge recently shared an article by another author for National Catholic Register on priest sex abuse that was headlined, “How to Recognize Demonic Activity in the Church Scandals, According to an Exorcist.”
Judge is the grandson of a Washington Senators baseball player.
An article by the Ethics and Public Policy Center mentions Judge and his grandfather. “Then we have Mark Gauvreau Judge, hitherto known in Washington circles as the town’s most ardent Senators fan,” the article reads. “His grandfather, Joe Judge, had played for the team during baseball’s golden years; grandson Mark kept the flame of local baseball passion alive for decades, and is currently locked in an embrace of the re-commissioned Nationals. Now, outside the ballpark, Judge lowers the boom on the silliness that beset Catholic high schools and colleges in the post-Vatican II period in a feisty memoir, God and Man at Georgetown Prep: How I Became a Catholic Despite 20 Years of Catholic Schooling (Crossroad).”
The article continues, “Looking back from his early forties, he knows he was cheated of a serious Catholic education at Georgetown Prep and Catholic University — and he’s not happy about it. Judge is no plaster saint; he freely admits that his own propensities for wild behavior (especially when fueled by drinking) made a circus out of his high school and (extended) college years.”
A Washington Post obituary for Mark Judge’s father says that the grandfather was named Joe Judge and played first base for the Senators.
4. Mark Judge Has Produced Documentaries & Focused on Veterans’ Issues; His Dad Was an Editor for National Geographic
A now deleted post from Mark Judge’s Facebook page.
The biography of Judge adds that he “has produced videos for the Liberty Island Templeton Foundation, Georgetown University, and is the writer for Whittaker Chambers: A Documentary Film, which is now in production. From 2015-2017 he covered Hollywood and pop culture for the Media Research Center, with a special emphasis on veterans and veteran’s films, including Gary Sinise and the annual G.I. Film Festival.”
On Facebook, he once wrote, “In the 1980s I was working at a theater when my dad helped bust up a Russian spy ring in D.C. It wasn’t cloak and dagger stuff, just making a phone call after seeing something suspicious.”
Judge’s father was Joseph Judge, who was an editor and writer for National Geographic, according to his obituary in The Washington Post. Joseph Judge undertook a five-year study to determine where Christopher Columbus actually landed, the obit reports, and wrote a book about a Civil War march by Confederate Gen. Jubal Early.
On social media, before he deleted it, Judge sometimes wrote about high school and often shared posts on politics, some which he wrote.
Mark Judge wrote recently on Facebook, “I was asked to write about my upcoming 35th high school reunion, and my favorite 80s songs from the time. (I can still remember dancing to this one at the Summer House). Some of my friends from the time have gone on to noteworthy careers.”
For the Daily Caller, Judge has criticized Barack and Michelle Obama. One article contained this passage, “Obama lacks courage when it comes to politics, but his real lack of spunk is evident in his abject terror of his wife Michelle. It’s not uncommon for a husband to joke about his wife being angry at him, but Obama obsessively returns to the theme in speech after speech…On their first date, the couple saw the violent black rage film ‘Do the Right Thing,’ so that Michelle could make sure Barack ‘was down with the struggle.'”
The article continues: “With her love of violent movies, her fixation on fitness, and death glare that appears when she doesn’t like what she’s hearing, Michelle is actually more man than her husband. Oh for the days when president George W. Bush gave his wife Laura a loving but firm pat on the backside in public. The man knew who was boss.”
The Washington Post reported that a playwright’s quote “runs alongside the family photos on Mark Judge’s page in his high school yearbook” and reads: “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.”
5. Judge Has Weighed in About Sexual Harassment on Social Media & Shared Articles About Kavanaugh
A deleted post from Mark Judge’s Facebook page.
Mark Judge recently shared a Town Hall.com column by another author that was headlined, “Brett Kavanaugh Deserves 95 Votes.”
Mark Judge has shared stories on sexual harassment in the past. For example, he shared a story on the accusations against former CBS head Les Moonves. The Hollywood Reporter article that Judge shared read, “‘Designing Women’ Creator Goes Public With Les Moonves War: Not All Harassment Is Sexual (Guest Column).” Judge wrote with the share, “Amazing.”
On September 11, 2018, he weighed in on something called the Small Press Expo, writing, “I love the fact that the Small Press Expo is always just a few days after 9/11. After that grief and anger you have three days of color, creativity, and a hotel filled with people who have the freedom to create anything they want. You get libertarian loners, weird sex fetishes, American history, memoirs, adolescent angst, politics, rock and roll. You walk around the room seeing freedom, freedom, freedom.”
He has also shared articles flattering to conservatives, including one from Politico that reads, “Liberals Don’t Know Much About Conservative History. And both sides suffer for it.”
In August, he shared a photo of a book called “1984 Yearbook” and wrote on Facebook, “Wow. Despite many moves, despite my ADD, despite the universe expanding, this thing appears. My 1984 diary. Terrified to open it but couldn’t resist three quick looks: 1) ‘Watched ‘Flashdance.’ Didn’t like it.’ 2) ‘Reading a book about Vietnam, want to go there.’ 3) ‘Spent all day cutting brush in 90 degree heat because parents are mad at us for summer parties. Wish I was at a movie with Meg instead.’ Pretty much my life now.”
Judge also shared an Axios story by another author that was headlined, “Fresh signs that Democrats won’t be able to stop Kavanaugh.” He also shared an article on Donald Trump that ran on Breitbart (and was written by another author.)
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