Getty/Twitter Sen. Susan Collins and lawyer Michael Avenatti
Michael Avenatti told Heavy that it’s “complete garbage” that Sen. Susan Collins got to her ‘yes’ vote on embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because of his client Julie Swetnick’s allegations and by extension some are saying, because of Avenatti himself.
Late Friday afternoon Avenatti said Collins not only “attacked” Swetnick but Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as well. He rejected reports and punditry suggesting Collins moved to the ‘yes’ column because of him and his client.
WATCH: Did Michael Avenatti play a role in the Kavanaugh confirmation process? #MTPDaily
Collins spoke Friday after the cloture vote, which was a procedural vote to end debate on the nomination and move it to a final floor vote Saturday. The vote was 51 to 49 with Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, voting to move the vote forward and GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski voting no.
Collins spoke a few hours later.
“Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important,” Collins said. “I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape. This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others. That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness.”
The Daily Beast reported that it was the Swetnick allegations that convinced Collins to vote in favor of Kavanaugh.
Avenatti rejected that saying to Heavy, “that’s not what she said.”
“She never said that’s what moved her,” Avenatti said in a text. He then asked rhetorically: “And, how does one determine credibility without any investigation.”
He is referring to the few-days-long and limited in scope FBI investigation where his client’s requests to be interviewed were ignored.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was not interviewed. Ford testified under oath that Brett Kavanaugh, when the two were teens, tried to rape her.
I don’t like Michael Avenatti. But suggesting that he caused this is epic trolling by journalists unable or unwilling to grasp that the Republican Party is responsible for the Republican Party.
Avenatti’s Client Julie Swetnick Alleged Kavanaugh Facilitated Gang Rape by Allegedly Drugging Girls & Was Present When She Was Raped
Showtime screenshot
Swetnick signed an affidavit that alleged Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge participated in spiking grain alcohol punch with drugs identified as likely Quaaludes thereby facilitating alleged gang rapes of semi-conscious girls during parties in the early 1980s. And she claimed she herself was a victim of one of those rapes and that Kavanaugh was present. She does not say he was involved.
Swetnick described the parties as being not just in Washington D.C. but in Ocean City, Maryland. She said she has been told by “other women” about those beach parties and herself “witnessed” Kavanaugh and Judge involved in highly inappropriate conduct during the “Beach Week” party. She said that “observed Kavanaugh drink excessively many of these parties and engage in abusive and physically aggressive behavior towards girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, grinding against girls and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts. I likewise observed him verbally abusive towards girls by making crude sexual comments to them that we designed to demean, humiliate and embarrass them. I often witnessed Brett Kavanaugh speak in a demeaning manner about girls in general as well as specific girls by name. I also witnessed Brett Kavanagh behave as a mean drunk on many occasions at these parties.”
You can read Julie Swetnick’s sworn affidavit below:
Kavanaugh called Swetnick’s allegations from the “Twilight Zone.” Mark Judge also denied the allegations. His lawyer told CNN, Judge “vehemently denies the allegations contained in the Swetnik affidavit.”
Swetnick worked for the U.S. Mint from 2000 to 2104 where she was required to have security clearance. She worked as an IBM digital analyst, for Homeland Security as a senior web production manager, for the Department of Justice as a senior production webmaster, the Department of State in the same job, and previously at a number of public and private companies as a web project manager and web professional services engineer.
Swetnick has degrees from Montgomery College, the University of Maryland in astrophysics and computer science. She graduated from Gaithersburg (Maryland) High School.
The Roving Massive Unsupervised House Parties Cannot be Denied Since Schoolmasters Themselves Cautioned Parents That ‘Excessive Drinking & Sexual License [Were] Common’ at the Events
The entrance to the Georgetown Preparatory School is shown on September 18, 2018 in Bethesda, Maryland. Supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh attended the all-boys high school in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh has been accused of assault by Christine Blasey Ford, who was a student at the all-girls Holton Arms School, when the two were students.
The parties, reported on by The Washington Post in 1990 were legend; a number of upscale private boarding and day high schools in the Washington D.C. area had students holding massive empty-house parties where the alcohol flowed and supervision was non-existent. The heads of seven of those schools wrote to parents about the parties in 1990.
The heads of seven of D.C.’s distinguished private and mostly parochial schools wrote a letter to parents, an unusual move it was described at the time, to warn that their children were hosting massive, hundreds in attendance often, traveling habitual and always unsupervised parties where, The Washington Post reported at the time, said “excessive drinking and sexual license are common.”
The letter came from the head of schools at Georgetown Preparatory, Landon, Gonzaga College High, National Cathedral, Holton-Arms, Sidwell Friends and St. Albans schools.
“It would be hard to devise a better recipe for disaster than a social scene that includes the anonymity provided by a ‘open party,’ no adult supervision, considerable amounts of alcohol, and teenage hormones which encourage sexual or violent behavior.”
A number of victims and witnesses came forward to corroborate the alcohol-fueled, unsupervised party climate of the well-heeled and privileged teens. But it’s been reported that none of those witnesses were interviewed. Nor were a number of former college classmates who said Kavanaugh lied about his drinking.
The Senate received a 50-page report from the FBI which detailed its interviews with 10 witnesses saying it had not found evidence to corroborate allegations by Blasey Ford or Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh’s former Yale University classmate who said the judge exposed himself to her.
Democrats called the investigation a sham.