Letter Claims Attempted Assault by a Teenage Kavanaugh

WASHINGTON — A secretive letter shared with senators and federal investigators by the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee charges that a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and a male friend trapped a teenage girl in a bedroom during a party and tried to assault her, according to three people familiar with the contents of the letter.

The letter says that Kavanaugh, then a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in suburban Washington and now President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, had been drinking at a social gathering when he and the male friend took the teenage girl into a bedroom. The door was locked, and she was thrown on the bed. Kavanaugh then got on top of the teenager and put a hand over her mouth, as the music was turned up, according to the account.

But the young woman was able to extricate herself and leave the room before anything else occurred, the letter says.

The woman says she considered the incident an assault. She has declined to be publicly identified, and she asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, not to publicize the letter.

In a statement shared by the White House, Kavanaugh said the charges were false.

“I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation,” he said. “I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

The episode took place more than 30 years ago, when all three individuals involved were minors. The New York Times has not seen the letter, but its contents were described by the three people.

With speculation about the letter’s contents circulating this week, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, released a different letter Friday, sent to him and to Feinstein and signed by 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh while in high school.

“Through the more than 35 years we have known him, Brett has stood out for his friendship, character, and integrity,” the women wrote. “In particular, he has always treated women with decency and respect. That was true when he was in high school, and it has remained true to this day.”

Grassley was still planning to move ahead with Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a key vote to advance the nomination Thursday, and Republican leaders hope to hold a final vote of the full Senate before the end of September to allow Kavanaugh to be seated before the start of the Supreme Court’s fall term next month. Grassley’s aides said Kavanaugh had been the subject of six FBI background checks since 1993, and none had turned up anything like the episode in question.

It was not immediately clear how, if at all, the accusation would influence senators who must decide whether to give Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment to the court. Only a small group of moderate senators remain publicly undecided about their votes, and objections from either one of two undecided Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, could thwart confirmation.

Collins spent an hour on the phone with Kavanaugh on Friday, shortly after details of the letter were first published. The call had been scheduled for days, and neither the White House nor Collins’ office would discuss what was said.

The White House and outside pro-Kavanaugh groups continued to accuse Democrats of playing dirty, withholding mysterious information until the eve of Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a last-ditch effort to derail a nominee they have always opposed.

“I do not intend to allow Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation to be stalled because of an eleventh-hour accusation that Democrats did not see fit to raise for over a month,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said Friday. He added, “The claims are wholly unverifiable, and come at the tail-end of a process that was already marred by ugly innuendo, dishonesty, and the nastiest form of our politics. The American people deserve much better from the Senate as an institution.”

Tom Mentzer, a spokesman for Feinstein, released a statement Friday afternoon saying, “Senator Feinstein was given information about Judge Kavanaugh through a third party. The senator took these allegations seriously and believed they should be public. However, the woman in question made it clear she did not want this information to be public. It is critical in matters of sexual misconduct to protect the identity of the victim when they wish to remain anonymous, and the senator did so in this case.”

The woman’s letter first arrived on Capitol Hill in July, initially to the office of Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. It was quickly shared with Feinstein, as well, who from her senior position on the Judiciary Committee would lead Democratic questioning of Kavanaugh.

But Feinstein was torn by competing concerns. The woman made clear that though she had shared the information because she felt it could be relevant to Senate consideration of Kavanaugh, she did not want to come forward or make the accusations public.

For weeks, the letter and its contents were closely limited to a tight circle of aides. Feinstein chose not to raise the matter either publicly or privately during hourslong questioning of Kavanaugh by senators last week, or in written questions sent to the nominee afterward and she did not initially share it with colleagues, including Grassley.

By the time Kavanaugh was on the witness stand, though, its existence had become an open secret on Capitol Hill, with speculation circling among reporters, lawmakers and congressional aides about its contents. The Intercept first reported its existence Wednesday evening.

Under pressure from other Democratic senators, who had been fighting a pitched battle against Kavanaugh for weeks — largely over access to documents from his years in the George W. Bush White House — Feinstein called a meeting late Wednesday to share with the lawmakers the letter’s contents but not the letter itself.

Several of those senators advised Feinstein to at least share the letter with law enforcement authorities, and on Thursday she announced in a cryptic statement that she had sent “information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court” to the authorities, but only after redacting the woman’s name from the document. Others wanted to take a more aggressive tack and push what they saw as serious accusations into public view, despite the woman’s concerns, Senate officials familiar with the matter said. Feinstein’s statement appears to have been an attempt to account for both demands.

The FBI has not opened a criminal investigation into the matter, but added the letter to Kavanaugh’s background file. That updated file was in turn shared with the White House on Thursday and then sent to Capitol Hill, where it will be kept in the office of the chairman for review by senators. Senators themselves had little to say publicly about the accusations Friday. The new details seemed merely to harden the position of outside groups that have conducted an expensive war over the nominee, with at least one liberal group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, calling for Kavanaugh to withdraw his nomination.

“A woman’s identity should not have to be revealed to take her story seriously and pursue justice on her behalf,” the abortion rights group’s president, Ilyse Hogue, said in a statement. “The charge of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh is disqualifying and we call on him to immediately withdraw his nomination for the Supreme Court.”

Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, the conservative group pressing for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, drew the opposite conclusion, insisting there should be no delay in the confirmation process.

“This is nothing more than a last-minute attempt at character assassination,” she said.