Underlining its commitment to fair and honest journalism in a time of great national crisis, The New York Times has published, without comment or corroborating evidence, a North Carolina State University professor’s full statement accusing Brett Kavanaugh of drinking and starting a fight while at Yale.
NCSU professor Charles Ludington claims that while he and Kavanaugh were classmates at Yale the Supreme Court nominee often got so drunk he became belligerent and, on one occasion, instigated a fight that led to the arrest of a fellow student.
“When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive,” Ludington wrote. “On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post printed the statement (though the Post printed it in the context of a larger article). Ludington claims he went public with his memory to the nation’s two top print outlets because he felt Kavanaugh lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his drinking habits in college, and Ludington was, apparently, not contacted by the FBI in the course of their investigation into Kavanaugh’s background.
Strangely enough, although the incident apparently took place within a specific time period and involved legal adults, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post was able to obtain an arrest record for the purported student-victim, nor any witness statements taken by law enforcement pursuant to the incident. If Kavanaugh was as directly involved as Ludington claims, there should be a paper trail.
Ludington adds at the end of his statement that he feels it’s his “civic duty” to tell his story, though he admits it’s the alleged perjury — and not the drinking — that disqualifies Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court.