The Ordeal of Mark Judge

At the heart of the proceedings to place Brett Kavanaugh in the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is a man in hiding . . . a man the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have tried hard to avoid questioning in public.

Christine Blasey Ford has repeatedly identified Mark Judge as the other student from an all-boys Catholic school, Georgetown Preparatory, who joined Kavanaugh in pushing her into a bedroom at a party. She was a 15-year-old who had just completed her sophomore year at Holton-Arms, an all-girls school, and the boys were one or two years older.

Both young men were “highly inebriated,” she recalled, and played loud music to cover the other sounds in the room. Judge was present, she has stated, when Kavanaugh held her down on the bed, tried to pull her clothes off, and clapped his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream.

Ever since the story broke two eventful weeks ago, Judge has repeatedly said (through his attorney) that he doesn’t recall any such event, that he never saw Kavanaugh behave in the manner she described, and that he does not wish to comment or be questioned about it publicly.

Defenders of Kavanaugh, whether they know him or not, try to assert “that’s it.” If Judge and the other attendees at the party named by Ford say they saw and remember nothing, then there’s no need to question them. Plus, he has pleaded, “As a recovering alcoholic and a cancer survivor, I have struggled with depression and anxiety.”

On Friday morning, Senator John Cornyn (Republican from Texas), made a big deal about this: “… our colleagues across the aisle believe that the appropriate course of conduct is to drag Mr. Judge into this circus-like atmosphere and to subject his battle with alcoholism and addiction to public investigation and scrutiny and ridicule. That is cruel. That is reckless. That is indecent.”

Of course, the committee had no problem with dragging Dr. Ford into the same circus, despite her long struggle with anxiety and psychotherapy for post-trauma stress. Judge celebrated and tried to profit off his years of drinking and sex by writing several books about them; a pity he can’t see his way to talk about his past for the good of his country as well.

If we accept Ford’s account as true, then Kavanaugh is lying to protect his reputation and land a lifetime post on the nation’s highest court. It’s not difficult to see why Judge might want to avoid having to testify as well, since:

• His honest account would show Kavanaugh has been lying simply by having been there, and Judge probably doesn’t wish destroy his longtime friend’s career.

• If the encounter played out as Ford has described it, Kavanaugh was clearly pushing the boundaries beyond what Judge could see he should. Ford’s July 30 letter says she remembers Judge saying “stop” as well as “go for it,” and he later jumped on the bed and “the two [boys] scrapped with each other.” Whether Judge intended to help her escape or not, that was a result.

• Judge is also implicated in the assault as an accessory, in deed if not necessarily under the law (the statute of limitations has likely lapsed).

To put it simply, Mark Judge holds his friend’s future in the palm of his hand, and if Christine Blasey Ford’s account is accurate, he faces the following tough choice.

1. Tell the truth, and end Kavanaugh’s career. Clearly, the nominee would be denied a seat on the high court. I don’t know whether he would lose his current job as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. But Mark Judge would likely be subjected to abuse and execration at least equal to what Dr. Ford has suffered in the past two weeks: death threats that drove her and her family out of their home, doxxing, fake emails in her name, and an inability to do her work.

OR

2. Lie to protect his old friend and help him land his dream job . . . but risk committing perjury and being punished for that if the truth were to come out some other way.

It may even be his conscience as well as his fear of the consequences that has driven him to go for a third option: plead ignorance and noninvolvement, and hide. “I did not ask to be involved in this matter nor did anyone ask me to be involved,” he repeated in both a Sept. 18 letter and a Sept. 27 letter after she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But one could say the same for Christine Blasey Ford . . . in terms of both the attempted assault in 1982, and the way her life has been overturned this year. “My greatest fears have been realized” she told the committee, “and the reality has been far worse than I expected.” She and her family have been “the target of constant harassment and death threats. … Since September 16, my family and I have been living in various secure locales, with guards.”

She had hoped to avoid this; she initially requested that her July 30 letter be kept confidential and her name kept secret, because she feared the infamy and abuse that indeed occurred.

But in that letter, she wrote: “I felt guilty and compelled as a citizen about the idea of not saying anything.” Once the letter had leaked, and she had been identified (how, has yet to be determined), Dr. Ford stepped up to the plate and entered a place in history.

If her account is true, Mark Judge is still trying to dodge his duty and a possible spot in history that would reflect better on him than he has thus far behaved or chosen to depict himself.