Kavanaugh's Yale classmates take issue with his 'choir boy' self-presentation on Fox News

Brett Kavanaugh.
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

It may be true that, as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh joked in 2015, "what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep." But Yale University? Not so much.

Reporters have apparently spent about a week trying to contact Yale classmates of Kavanaugh and Deborah Ramirez, who says Kavanaugh exposed his genitals to her freshman year, but Kavanaugh's Monday night interview on Fox News prompted some of them to call back. Kavanaugh told Fox News he "never" drank so much he didn't remember things and didn't have sexual intercourse until at least several years into college, among other things.

"He's trying to paint himself as some kind of choir boy," Lynne Brookes, a Republican and former Ramirez roommate, told The Washington Post on Tuesday. She remembers several instances where Kavanaugh was extremely inebriated. "You can't lie your way onto the Supreme Court, and with that statement out, he's gone too far," she said.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Liz Swisher, a Democrat and oncologist who also roomed with Ramirez, said "there's no medical way I can say that he was blacked out," but "it's not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess." How did she know? "Brett was a sloppy drunk, and I know because I drank with him," she told the Post. "He'd end up slurring his words, stumbling." A freshman roommate of Kavanaugh's and almost a dozen other classmates remember the same thing. Some Yale friends said Kavanaugh drank heavily but not sloppily.

One classmate, Stephen Kantrowitz, tweeted: "Perhaps Brett Kavanaugh was a virgin for many years after high school. But he claimed otherwise in a conversation with me during our freshman year in Lawrance Hall at Yale." Kantrowitz, now a historian, told BuzzFeed News he remembered Kavanaugh's claim "because it was the first time I had had such a conversation with an acquaintance who was not a friend."

Explore More
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.