Mark Judge, the other man named in Christine Ford’s Brett Kavanaugh allegations, explained

The sexual assault allegation from Christine Blasey Ford that have upended Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing aren’t just about Kavanaugh. They also mention a friend of Kavanaugh’s who Ford says was in the room when the assault took place: Mark Judge.

Ford describes Judge as watching Kavanaugh’s alleged assault, occasionally egging him on, and eventually jumping on top of her and Kavanaugh — a move that allowed her to escape.

Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegations as “completely false.” Judge denied them to the Weekly Standard on Friday. (He declined to comment to the Washington Post for its article published Sunday.)

Judge was a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Preparatory School in Maryland and is now a conservative writer who has written for publications such as the Daily Caller and the American Spectator.

He’s floated some controversial ideas in his writings — including asking in 2006 whether gay people are perverts and longing for the days when President George W. Bush could give his wife, Laura, a “loving but firm pat on the backside in public” as a show that he “knew who was boss.” He’s also the author of several books, including one recounting his teenage years of alcoholism and addiction.

He is now at the center of the brewing storm over Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while at a party during the early 1980s, when they were both in high school. The accusations could derail President Donald Trump’s second Supreme Court nomination, which Democrats have asked to be delayed, even as many Republicans and the White House seem determined to forge ahead.

Ford alleges Judge was in the room when Kavanaugh assaulted her — and that he played along

Ford alleges that at sometime during the early 1980s, she was at a party when Kavanaugh and Judge, both drunk, corralled her into a bedroom. Ford says that while Judge watched, Kavanaugh “pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding her body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it,” according to an account written by Emma Brown at the Washington Post, who interviewed Ford.

When she tried to scream, Ford alleges that Kavanaugh put her hand over her mouth, and she was able to escape when Judge jumped on top of them and knocked them all down.

In the letter Ford sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in July outlining the incident, Judge’s name apparently appears, but in the public version of the letter, it’s redacted:

Ford also wrote that she never saw Kavanaugh after the assault but did see Judge, who seemed “extremely uncomfortable” upon their meeting.

Judge told the Weekly Standard that he first learned he was named in Ford’s letter when Ronan Farrow from the New Yorker, who alongside Jane Mayer detailed the allegations against Kavanaugh without naming Ford in a report last week, told him. Judge has backed up Kavanaugh’s emphatic denial of the accusations.

“It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way,” Judge said.

The Weekly Standard asked Judge if he saw Kavanaugh engaged in any sort of “rough-housing” with a female student in high school, which he also denied. “I can’t. I can recall a lot of rough-housing with guys. It was an all-boys school, we would rough-house with each other,” he said. “I don’t remember any of that stuff going on with girls.”

Judge has written about his drunken high school days — and apparently referenced Kavanaugh — in the past

As Mother Jones reported, Judge’s 2005 book, God and Man at Georgetown Prep, “apparently paints the school as overrun with gay priests who promote a form of liberalism that wrecks Catholic education.” (The book is now out of print). And both that title and Judge’s 1997 memoir, Wasted: Takes of a Gen X Drunk, detail rampant alcoholism at the school, including his own.

In the book, according to Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer, Judge writes that he reached a point where once he had one beer, “I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated.” He writes that the school made students do community service on Sundays in an effort to try to keep them from drinking too much the night before.

Judge refers to Georgetown Prep as “Loyola Prep” and, according Mother Jones, also changes the names of the people in the book — but he wasn’t too sneaky about it, apparently, because there’s a “Bart O’Kavanaugh” in the book who seems quite likely to be Brett Kavanaugh:

This paints a rather different picture than the one Kavanaugh did when his nomination was first announced. “The motto of my Jesuit high school was, ‘Men for others,’” Kavanaugh said when speaking from the East Room of the White House. “I have tried to live that creed.”

Judge has written in the past about rape, feminism, and body language

While Judge has currently entered the limelight because of his ties to Kavanaugh, he’s been a part of conservative media circles for quite some time. He’s written for the Daily Caller and the American Spectator and has floated a number of controversial assertions and ideas, including when it comes to women. Since coming under scrutiny in light of Ford’s allegations, Judge has deleted much of his social media presence.

“You’re thinking it even if you don’t say it: Are gay people perverts?” he wrote in a 2006 piece titled “Gay Sex” on website PoliticalMavens.com. In 2012 for the Daily Caller, Judge wrote that the “odds were very high” that a black person has stolen his bike. Other writings attributed to Judge on the Daily Caller include “The angry ladies of Jezebel,” “Miley Cyrus and American malaise,” and “Sex and Duck Dynasty: the liberal double standard.”

Feminist author Jessica Valenti pointed out on Twitter that in 2013 for the Daily Caller, Judge wrote that President George W. Bush’s interactions with his wife, first lady Laura Bush, showed “the man knew who was boss.” She also highlighted another instance where Judge’s writings suggested women are “sending out signals” with how they dress and act.

“Of course there is never any excuse to rape someone,” Judge wrote in a post called “Feminism and Body Language: A Double Standard.” “But it’s possible to have two seemingly contradictory thoughts to be both equally true.”

Judge continued:

He also publicly wondered where all of the “manly” journalists have gone.

Heavy.com unearthed some of Judge’s now vanished social media posts, one of which shares a fiction post he wrote for Liberty Island magazine.

“Just got a bit of a jolt from a high school buddy who just called me,” he wrote on Facebook when he shared the post. “This is (mostly) fiction, bro. Nothing to worry about.”

Sourse: breakingnews.ie

Mark Judge, the other man named in Christine Ford’s Brett Kavanaugh allegations, explained

0.00 (0%) 0 votes

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here