One of the individuals who has been recently vouching for Brett Kavanaugh’s character in the press is Chris Dudley, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who went on to play in the NBA. From CNN:
The White House … directed CNN to comments made by Chris Dudley, a close friend of Kavanaugh’s and a former NBA player.
Dudley recalled that Kavanaugh was never aggressive when he drank.
“He wasn’t that type of person,” Dudley said.
Kavanaugh himself cited Dudley during last Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the course of arguing that he’d never been a blackout-level “sloppy drunk,” as another classmate had alleged in a Washington Post piece. “I do not think that’s a fair characterization,” Kavanaugh said. “Chris Dudley’s quoted in that article, and I would refer you to what Chris Dudley said. I spent more time with Chris Dudley in college than just about anyone.” (Said Dudley to the Post: “I went out with him all the time. He never blacked out. Never even close to blacked out.”)
Well, the New York Times reported Monday night that Kavanaugh and Dudley were questioned by New Haven, Connecticut, police after a 1985 bar fight, which a witness said that Kavanaugh instigated by throwing ice at another patron who’d cursed at him. (Yale’s campus is in New Haven.) Dudley then allegedly smashed a beer glass on the man’s head, opening a wound on his ear that required treatment at a hospital. (At the time, Dudley denied to police that he’d attacked the man and Kavanaugh declined to say whether he’d thrown ice.)
The Times said in its report that it could not find any indication that anyone was arrested or charged with a crime related to the incident, but on Tuesday, CNN reported that Dudley was, in fact, arrested and taken to jail:
There’s still no indication that Dudley was charged with a crime for the alleged attack; he doesn’t appear to have yet commented on the Times or CNN reports.
In responding to the allegation by Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party, Dudley has also said that Kavanaugh was never “disrespectful or inappropriate with women” during their time together. A fourth classmate, Lynne Brookes, told CNN that’s not true either, describing an incident in which she saw Dudley and Kavanaugh intentionally interrupt a sexual encounter to “embarass” the woman involved:
I do remember one party in particular where both Brett and Chris Dudley were very drunk. And they thought it would be really funny to barge into a room where a guy and a girl had gone off together and embarrass that woman. Chris Dudley was the one who went in, under the egging on of Brett Kavanaugh, and they thought it was funny. The girl was mortified and I was furious.
(Of note: Both Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her and Ramirez’s allegation of indecent exposure involved other men in the room who were laughing at/egging Kavanaugh on.)
Chris Dudley might have been the wrong choice as a character witness.
