Julie Swetnick Says ‘Soul Was Broken’ In Rape At Brett Kavanaugh Party
Julie Swetnick Image by Michael Avenatti/Twitter
Julie Swetnick lashed out at Brett Kavanaugh in her first television interview Monday, calling the embattled Supreme Court nominee a “very aggressive, very sloppy drunk — very mean drunk.”
Swetnick, who is Jewish, expanded on her claims that Kavanaugh participated in high school parties where she and other women were drugged with spiked fruit punch and raped by several men. She spoke out in an exclusive face-to-face interview with Kate Snow of NBC News.
“My body was violated,” said Swetnick, 55, an information technology expert who has worked for several federal agencies. “My soul was broken.”
“I felt like someone took me and basically said: ‘You are worthless. You are nothing to us.”
Swetnick described in sexual assault in graphic detail.
“I was touched everywhere,” she said. “I was physically assaulted in every way you could physically assault a woman. It was horrible.”
Although Swetnick conceded she is not certain that Kavanaugh was one of the young men who attacked her, she recounted hearing the voices of Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, as she was raped.
“I could hear them laughing and laughing,” Swetnick said. “There is no way he should go scot free on this and he should be on the Supreme Court. It’s unthinkable to me.”
Swetnick claimed that she told her late mother about the attack and that she reported the incident to the Montgomery County police. NBC said it was trying to confirm that with police.
Swetnick grimaced when Snow replayed a tape of Kavanaugh emphatically denying her claim during his nationally televised Senate confirmation hearing.
“You know what I say to that? He’s a liar,” Swetnick said.
Swetnick is one of three women to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when he was in high school in suburban Washington D.C. or in college at Yale University.
But the FBI appears to be only probing the claims made by the other two women, Christine Blasey Ford and Debbie Ramirez as part of a compromise forged by moderate Republican senators.
Swetnick detailed the bombshell accusations in a sworn affadavit made last week, but she backed away from some key details in the interview with Snow.
She had earlier said Kavanaugh helped spike the punch at parties to help get young women inebriated but in the interview she said only that she saw him near the punch bowl, handing out plastic cups. She had said in the sworn statement that Kavanaugh’s friends lined up to rape incapacitated women. On NBC, she described them as “huddled by the doors.”
Lawyer Michael Avenatti Avenatti said Swetnick was ready to talk to authorities and take a lie-detector test to bolster her claims.
Swetnick had also come under scrutiny for past legal disputes, including a former employer who accused her of misstating her academic and work history.
She shrugged off those reports as unfounded and “absurd” in the interview.
Meanwhile, Democrats fumed over the narrow scope of the FBI’s investigation into Kavanaugh after reports agents were ordered by both the Trump White House and Senate to interview accusers Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez; several high school friends of Kavanaugh, including Mark Judge; and one of Ford’s friends from her teenage years.
Swetnick’s claim appeared to be excluded although Trump insisted the FBI could talk to anyone it wants. Avenatti, who also represents porn star Stormy Daniels in her separate battle with Trump, said she has not been contacted by the feds.
“As long as [the investigation] is conducted in professional manner and we give the FBI the ability to do their jobs instead of having it be micromanaged by the White House we can at least get to the bottom of the evidence,” Senate Judiciary Committee member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) said.
This morning I was on @FaceTheNation to talk about the importance of allowing the FBI to do their jobs and not allowing an FBI background check to be micromanaged by the White House. pic.twitter.com/ZHBxAR3ZhJ
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) September 30, 2018
Trump pushed back Monday on accusations he was somehow hampering the investigation.
“I want them to do a very comprehensive investigation. Whatever that means, according to the senators and the Republicans and the Republican majority, I want them to do that,” Trump reportedly said at a White House news conference.
“With that being said, I’d like it to go quickly.”
Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who forced the new FBI probe by refusing to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, said he wants a thorough investigation, not one aimed at providing political “cover.”
Contact Ben Fractenberg at fractenberg@forward.com or on Twitter, @fractenberg
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