Much Ado About Nothing: Swetnick Walks Back Kavanaugh Accusations

Of the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Julie Swetnick’s are by far the most outrageous. They are the ones Kavanaugh said were a farce and straight out of The Twilight Zone.  She alleges that when she knew him in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh was a leader of a gang-rape party circuit.  Seriously.

Swetnick’s fantastic accounts came about from her sworn statement, released by celebrity anti-Trump lawyer and Democrat presidential hopeful, Micheal Avenatti. Her claims go far beyond any other accusation. If they are shown to be true, Kavanaugh must not just lose the nomination vote but spend the rest of his life in prison.

Monday night, NBC ran an interview with Swetnick.  Interviewer Kate Snow tells you right up front that they couldn’t verify her story. Snow also points out various discrepancies in the accounts. She never explains why the hell they ran the story at all, given the 100% complete lack of corroboration on anything.

Let’s take a look at the key allegations – any of which would disqualify Kavanaugh for night court, much less the Supreme Court.  We’ll see how her sworn statement stands up to what she said on NBC.

Swetnick swore she knew Kavanaugh “spiked” punch at a party with “drugs and/or grain alcohol.” On television, this felony drugging becomes merely standing by the punch! She swears in her statement to seeing Kavanaugh lined up outside a room at a party, waiting for his turn to rape someone inside. On television, this claim became boys huddled by doors and laughing at a party, and that viewed in hindsight, the behavior is “too coincidental.”  We never learn in the interview what was too coincidental or how a group of boys laughing outside a room at a party filled with the sons and daughters of Washington’s elite is likely to mean unspeakable brutality is happening behind the door.

Her most explosive claim, sworn under penalty of perjury, is that Kavanaugh was present while she herself was drugged and then gang-raped. On television, this claim gets walked back. She remembers Kavanaugh being at the party where she was later raped, she now says. Swetnick does not accuse him of raping her, knowing she was attacked, helping to assault her, or anything of the sort.

At first, she claimed in the interview that she decided to come forward six or so weeks ago, motivated by Christine Blasey Ford doing the same.  She seemed unfazed when Snow informed her that Ford’s allegation became public only two weeks prior to their Sunday, September 30 interview. Finally, we have another foursome of friends and acquaintances – without a single instance of corroboration. Snow reports that Swetnick gave them the names of four others who attended parties with her and could verify that part of the story, at least. What happened? Kate Snow says one is deceased, two didn’t call back, and the fourth – wait for it – does not remember a person named Julie Swetnick. It doesn’t take an FBI investigation to reveal this set of allegations, at least, as much ado about nothing.