New Witness Accuses Brett Kavanaugh of Setting Up “Gang Rapes”

Julie Swetnick says she attended house parties in the early 80s with Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. Swetnick claims that the pair drank to excess, targeted girls to take advantage of, and then made them the victims of "gangs" or "trains" of boys who raped them.Photo provided by Mark Avenatti

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Well, um, celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti has entered the Brett Kavanaugh sweepstakes this morning with a written affadavit from Julie Swetnick, who says she attended many house parties in the early 80s with Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. She describes them as “joined at the hip.” And her affadavit is a barnburner: “I fully understand the seriousness of the statement contained within this declaration,” she says:

And then this:

You can read the full thing here. This certainly marks a major turn in the Kavanaugh affair if Swetnick turns out to be credible and if anyone else steps up to corroborate what she says. I guess today isn’t going to be a boring day.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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