In 1983 letter, Kavanaugh described himself and friends as 'loud, obnoxious drunks'
In a note he wrote in 1983 to friends ahead of their trip to Ocean City, Maryland, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said whoever got to their rental condo first should "warn the neighbors that we're loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go about 30 miles..."
The New York Times reviewed a copy of the letter, which was given to seven of his high school classmates joining him on the trip. Kavanaugh, who has been accused by two women of sexual assault in 1982 and 1983, has denied drinking to the point of memory loss or vomiting while in high school and college, despite friends and classmates stating otherwise. Friend Tobin Finizio told the Times that drinking was "part of the social life. In the late '70s and early '80s, if you look at the statistics, underage drinking was fairly prevalent. We look at it now and say, 'Oh my God, that was crazy.'"
Kavanaugh declined to comment on the note, only saying through his lawyers, "This is a note I wrote to organize 'Beach Week' in the summer of 1983." The Times spoke with several of Kavanaugh's high school classmates who said they saw Kavanaugh and his friends inebriated during parties, and several remembered Kavanaugh lifting an empty beer keg above his head, celebrating the fact that he and his friends were getting closer to finishing 100 kegs before the end of the school year, something he mentioned in his senior yearbook. Four classmates also told the Times that Kavanaugh and his friends would sometimes drink so much they had difficulty standing; three of those classmates signed a letter in July endorsing Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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