Michael Avenatti and Julie Swetnick, the porn lawyer and his client who falsely accused Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh of gang rape, are in big trouble. And not just because their reputations are shot, given that NBC proved Swetnick’s story false by asking her a few straightforward questions.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has asked the Justice Department to investigate the pair for lying to the committee during its probe of the allegations against Kavanaugh.
Meanwhile, NBC reported yesterday that a “witness,” who supposedly corroborated Swetnick’s bogus tale, said Avenatti twisted her account.
Grassley’s Letter
Grassley’s letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray says he wants the pair investigated for “materially false statements they made to the Committee during the course of the Committee’s investigation.”
Avenatti tweeted his explosive allegations of gang rape, then published a signed declaration from Swetnick, who “witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ … by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.” Swetnick claimed “11 boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl…. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”
She said the parties occurred “nearly every weekend during the school year” between 1981 and 1983, and that she, too, was gang-raped. Yet she continued attending the parties, she wrote.
Grassley provided plenty of evidence that the pair lied to the committee. For instance, Swetnick wrote that she saw gang rapes during Beach Week in Ocean City, Maryland. But Avenatti didn’t mention Beach Week in his original claim to the committee, Grassley wrote. That came up “only after the Committee publicly released Judge Kavanaugh’s 1982 calendar — which included a notation for Beach Week.”
Grassley also observed that Swetnick, for all intents and purposes, retracted her allegations in an interview with NBC that aired on October 1, as The New American reported. Wrote Grassley, “Swetnick contradicted key claims she had made to the Committee via Mr. Avenatti.”
“When asked about the claim in her sworn statement,” Grassley wrote, “Ms. Swetnick demurred, stating … ‘I don’t know what he did’ as far as spiking punch. In this revised account to NBC, she merely claimed she ‘saw him by’ punch containers. This materially contradicted her statement.”
Beyond these problems, Grassley wrote, Swetnick has numerous problems with her credibility and presented zero evidence she even knew Kavanaugh.
NBC Comes in Again
“After the media hubbub” about the NBC interview, Grassley wrote, Avenatti tweeted about another anonymous accuser to support Swetnick.
This anonymous accuser wrote that she “witnessed firsthand Brett Kavanaugh, together with others, ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties I attended with Quaaludes and/or grain alcohol. I understood this was being done for the purpose of making girls more likely to engage in sexual acts and less likely to say ‘No.’” And Kavanaugh was “overly aggressive and verbally abusive to girls. This conduct included inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature.”
But that isn’t what she told NBC.
“I didn’t ever think it was Brett,” who spiked the punch, she said in “a phone interview arranged by Avenatti on Sept. 30…. As soon as the call began, the woman said she never met Swetnick in high school and never saw her at parties.” They became friends only in their 30s.
On October 3, without Avenatti present on a phone call, the woman told NBC she “skimmed” the declaration. She texted to NBC on October 4: “It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn’t see anyone spike the punch…. I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.”
Avenatti defended the account with claims that he had recordings and witnesses. He suggested NBC spoke to two different women, then put heat on the woman to stick with her story. “I just confirmed with her yet again that everything in the declaration is true and correct,” he texted NBC. “She must have been confused by your question.”
A few minutes later, the woman texted NBC that “everything in the declaration is true and you should not contact me anymore regarding this issue.”
To their credit, NBC’s reporters pressed the woman again:
But when reached by phone minutes later, the woman again insisted that she never saw Kavanaugh spike punch or act inappropriately toward women. She said she’s “been consistent in what she’s told Michael.”
In a subsequent text on Oct. 5, she wrote, “I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words.”
Breitbart.com noted that NBC knew by September 30, six days after Avenatti’s first gang-rape tweet, that Swetnick’s tale was full of holes.
Photo: Gage Skidmore / flickr
