Brett Kavanaugh friend Mark Judge says he'll cooperate with any law enforcement agency
Mark Judge, the high school friend of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh whom Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has said was present when she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh, said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would cooperate with any law enforcement agency that would "confidentially investigate" sexual misconduct allegations against him and Kavanaugh.
Judge also said he "categorically" denies sexual misconduct allegations made by Julie Swetnick.
In a sworn statement released Wednesday, Swetnick accused Kavanaugh and Judge of excessive drinking and inappropriate treatment of women in the early 1980s, among other accusations.
This comes after Republican Sen. Jeff Flake called for a delay in a floor vote in the Senate on Kavanaugh's nomination until after the FBI conducts a week-long investigation. Democrats in the Senate have been calling for an FBI investigation into Ford's allegations since they first came to light earlier in September.
When Ford came public with her allegations naming Judge and Kavanaugh specifically, Judge released a statement through his lawyer saying that he did not recall the incident. He also said that he "never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes."
He reiterated that statement in another letter sent to the Judiciary Committee on Thursday. He said that he did "not want to comment about these events publicly," and that he did "not recall the events described by Dr. Ford in her testimony."
Despite Democrats' calls for Judge to be brought before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify as a witness, Republicans declined to bring him before the committee.
Judge, the author of a memoir called "Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk," has struggled with alcohol addiction.
In her testimony before the Senate Thursday, Ford said that Kavanaugh and Judge had brought her into a room at a house party in the summer of 1982. She said that Kavanaugh had groped her, grinded against her, attempted to remove her clothes and covered her mouth with his hand as she attempted to shout. Meanwhile, she said that Judge stood nearby and laughed.
"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense," Ford said of her enduring memory of the incident. "I was underneath one of them while the two laughed. Two friends having a really good time with one another."