The credibility of Julie Swetnick, who accuses U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of participating in a nefarious criminal conspiracy to gang rape girls “nearly every weekend during the school year,” has taken another two hits.
Swetnick, whose attorney is porn lawyer Michael Avenatti, once faced a sexual harassment claim and also tried to shake down the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority with a bogus injury claim.
Piling this onto what we already know about Swetnick doesn’t make for the credible witness that Avenatti promised.
Accused of Sex Harassment
Webtrends, a company in Portland, Oregon, went after Swetnick in court in 2000. Its lawsuit against Swetnick said she was a troublesome, litigious employee seeking to defraud the company and harm its employees.
“Swetnick began her fraud against WebTrends before she was hired,” the lawsuit claimed. “On her job application she claimed to have graduated from Johns Hopkins University. That university has no record of her attendance. She also falsely described her work experience at Host Marriott Services Corporation,” and for months Swetnick tried to “defraud, defame and harass” the company and its employees.
Then Swetnick got a little too friendly with some employees, the company alleged, but Swetnick accused those employees of what she had been doing. “Shortly after becoming employed by WebTrends,” the lawsuit alleged, “a co-worker reported … that Swetnick had engaged in unwelcome, sexually offensive conduct. Rather than accept responsibility for her actions, Swetnick made false and retaliatory allegations that other co-workers had engaged in inappropriate conduct with her.”
After that, “Swetnick then began a leave of absence for suspicious and unsubstantiated reasons and from which she has never returned. During her leave of absence, Swetnick has engaged in a campaign of false and malicious allegations with the intent to harm the reputations of WebTrends and its employees and in the hope that WebTrends would pay her money rather than uphold and defend its reputation.”
As if that weren’t enough, the lawsuit says, she also tried to collect unemployment benefits in Washington, D.C. “based on the untrue statement she voluntarily” left the company.
Shakedown Fail
According to the Associated Press, Swetnick also filed a “personal injury lawsuit in Maryland against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. She claimed she lost more than $420,000 in earnings after she hurt her nose in a fall on a train in 1992.”
Problem was, Swetnick picked the wrong person to back up her story. “To support her claim for lost wages,” AP reported, “Swetnick named ‘Konam Studios’ as one of the companies promising to employ her. A court filing identified Nam Ko, a representative of ‘Kunam Studios,’ as a possible plaintiff’s witness for her case.”
But Ko didn’t know what Swetnick was talking about:
Ko, however, told AP on Friday that he was just a friend of Swetnick’s and that he had never owned a company with a name spelled either way and had never agreed to pay her money for any work before she injured her nose. He said he first met Swetnick at a bar more than a year after her alleged accident.
“I didn’t have any money back then. I [was] broke as can be.”
Ko said he has a hazy memory of Swetnick asking to use him as a “character reference” but doesn’t recall hearing about her lawsuit.
“I thought it was for a job application,” he said.
That case was dismissed, AP reported, because Swetnick couldn’t prove she was injured.
Other Problems
These and Swetnick’s other problems might explain why the FBI, in its renewed probe of Kavanaugh will not pursue the woman’s fanciful tale that the judge was a teenage criminal mastermind who ran a weekend, roving bordello. The Wall Street Journal, by the way, could not verify Swetnick’s ridiculous gang rape claims.
Anyway, where she failed with the Metro system, she succeeded with New York Life, which settled a sexual harassment claim with Swetnick. Swetnick has had other serious tax and legal problems as well.
This is the client whom Avenatti promised would bring down Kavanaugh. “Warning,” the porn lawyer tweeted. “My client re Kavanaugh has previously done work within the State Dept, U.S. Mint, & DOJ. She has been granted multiple security clearances in the past including Public Trust & Secret. The GOP and others better be very careful in trying to suggest that she is not credible.”
Avenatti has called the claims against Swetnick “bogus,” “hearsay,” and “complete nonsense.”
Image of Julie Swetnick: Screenshot of MSNBC video interview
