‘I will cooperate’ with FBI probe of sex assault claims

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Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice nominee for U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018. 

A lawyer for Mark Judge, the high school buddy of embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, told CNBC that Judge “will answer any and all questions posed to him” by the FBI about serious sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh.

The cooperation offer came on the heels of several senators asking for Kavanaugh’s final confirmation vote to be delayed until the FBI has a chance to investigate claims that he tried to rape a 15-year-old high school girl in the early 1980s while Judge looked on.

“If the FBI or any law enforcement agency requests Mr. Judge’s cooperation, he will answer any and all questions posed to him,” Judge’s lawyer Barbara Van Gelder told CNBC in an email.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee for days have blasted the Republican majority for not issuing a subpoena to Judge to testify at that committee on Thursday with Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s. Judge was the only other person who Ford has said was in the room during the alleged attack.

Judge, a recovering alcoholic who has admitted to abusing alcohol in high school, has said he has no memory of the incident described by Ford.

Ford, a research psychologist, has said Judge and Kavanaugh both were extremely drunk and laughing as Kavanaugh grinded his body against hers on a bed and tried to take off her clothes in a house in suburban Maryland. She testified that the attack only ended after Judge jumped on the bed, sending them tumbling off of it.

Kavanaugh had repeatedly refused Thursday under questioning by Democrats to call for an FBI probe of Ford’s allegations. He also angrily denied ever sexually assaulting anyone.

On Friday, Judge sent the Judiciary Committee a letter strongly denying allegations by another accuser, Julie Swetnick. She has claimed that during house parties in the early 1980s, she saw Judge and Kavanaugh spike punch with grain alcohol or drugs to lower the inhibitions of girls so they then could be gang raped.