Kavanaugh friend describes 1985 bar fight they were involved in while at Yale

During his junior year at Yale, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and four other men were interviewed by officers from the New Haven Police Department following an altercation at a bar, The New York Times reports.

In a September 1985 police report obtained by the Times, a 21-year-old man accused Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him "for some unknown reason." A witness said that a friend of Kavanaugh's, Chris Dudley, then hit the man in the ear with a glass. He started to bleed, and later received medical treatment. The police report says Dudley denied hitting the man, and when Kavanaugh spoke to officers, he did not want "to say if he threw the ice or not."

The incident took place at a bar called Demery's, and Kavanaugh was not arrested. On Sunday, Kavanaugh's Yale classmate Chad Ludington released a statement saying that on one of the "last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not be defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man's face." Ludington said they had been at a UB40 concert, and were trying to figure out if a man sitting at the bar was the lead singer. The man didn't like being stared at, and aggressively asked them to stop, Ludington said.

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At that point, Kavanaugh "threw his beer at the guy," and the man swung at Kavanaugh. Dudley then "took his beer and smashed it into the head of the guy, who by now had Brett in an embrace," Ludington said. Several other men then got involved, he added, and "I don't know what Brett was doing in the melee, but there was blood, there was glass, there was beer, and there was some shouting, and the police showed up." Dudley, who ran for Oregon governor as a Republican in 2010, has supported Kavanaugh's nomination, backing up Kavanaugh's claim he never drank to excess.