New sexual misconduct allegations about Brett Kavanaugh have reignited calls for the US Supreme Court Justice to be impeached. In a new book excerpted in the New York Times today, reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly investigated claims made by Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale.
At a drunken party at the university, Ramirez told reporters, Kavanaugh “pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her.” Interviews with at least seven people corroborated this story, while other classmates described additional occasions where Kavanaugh had behaved similarly. The FBI did not investigate this account.
In 2018, the judge’s confirmation hearings featured arresting testimony from California professor Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of assaulting her at a party. He denied these allegations, and was ultimately approved in a 50-48 Senate vote. Kavanaugh’s appointment has secured a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for at least a generation: of the four current Democratic judges, half are over 80 years old.
The investigation has sparked calls from leading Democrats to impeach the judge. California senator Kamala Harris, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee tweeted that the judge’s position was “an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice.” Julián Castro, who is also seeking to be the Democratic presidential candidate, called for a Congressional investigation into these allegations. Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren also called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment, saying his nomination was “rammed through the Senate.”
In an interview with ABC, fellow Judiciary Committee member Amy Klobuchar reiterated that she opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and warned that his “views on executive power” would “continue to haunt our country.”
But the president’s support for his nominee was unwavering. Trump fired off two tweets in the space of a couple of hours attacking the journalists responsible, labeling their work as “fake and corrupt news.” In an earlier missive, he encouraged the judge to “start suing people for libel,” and suggested that the “Justice Department should come to his rescue.”