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What Happened When A College Friend Of Kavanaugh Tried To Talk To The FBI

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Well, as we just heard Kelsey note there, the FBI interviewed nine people for its report, not Ford or Kavanaugh or some of the others from the judge's past who have stepped forward to share thoughts on his nomination. Chad Ludington went to Yale with Kavanaugh. He says they used to drink together, that when Kavanaugh drank, he got belligerent and aggressive, that he once saw Kavanaugh throw a drink in a man's face, prompting a bar fight and that he believes Kavanaugh may have lied under oath. I asked Chad Ludington, did he offer this information to the FBI?

CHAD LUDINGTON: Yes, I did. I eventually did reach them by phone. They did then tell me what exactly to do first. And that entailed sending a request for a form to fill out. And then I filled out the form. In fact, when the form arrived, it had been prefilled by the - presumably the agent I spoke to with my testimony in it that took up most of the 3,000 character spaces that they allowed.

KELLY: So you filled out this form. Did you ever then sit down with or have a phone interview with an FBI agent following up on it?

LUDINGTON: Alas, I did not. I was never called back. I waited by my phone, by my computer, hoping to get an email, but nothing happened.

KELLY: I mean, to be clear, your statement boils down to that you saw him drunk back in college, which of course does not prove or disprove allegations of sexual assault, which is the central question that the FBI was looking into. Why is your account relevant to the FBI? Why do they need to question you?

LUDINGTON: Well, I think it's relevant because first of all, I don't think one should lie in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. One has taken an oath. And one is also trying out - in this case, it's a job interview to become a Supreme Court justice.

KELLY: And when you're saying you thought he lied in testimony, this was in regard to the extent of his drinking.

LUDINGTON: Yes, yeah. The basic lie was that he said he knew unequivocally that there was absolutely no way he ever drank to the point of being unaware, of - the phrase is blacking out. I think Brett have confused that with passing out. But the blacking out phrase means doing things that you don't know you have done. And what I'm saying is there's no way that he, given the state of his intoxication on a frequent basis, can say that he knows for certain that he never got to that condition. How can one know?

KELLY: Let me ask you this. A central question today in Washington now that the FBI has delivered this additional supplemental report is, does that represent a complete and thorough investigation? From your vantage point, does it? Do they know everything you feel they need to know about your account, what you witnessed?

LUDINGTON: No, I don't think they did a complete investigation because, again, my allegations are really about what happened in the last week. That's where I think the crime was committed. I can't speak to what happened back in 1982. I can speak to what I know about 1983 and '84 and '85 at Yale college and then how that was spoken about in 2018. So I don't think they've done a very thorough job in that sense at all.

KELLY: Chad Ludington, Yale classmate of Brett Kavanaugh's - he's now an associate professor at North Carolina State University. And you heard him here on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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