Few in the media are remembering to be journalists instead of partisan hacks when it comes to examining the serious and salacious allegations being made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But Thursday morning, just a few hours before Judge Kavanaugh and his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford appeared before the Senate to testify, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota had on lawyer Michael Avenatti on New Day to press him on these claims, made by his client Julie Swetnick, the third woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.
“The claims your client makes are draw dropping, and some of them frankly strain credulity. They don't make sense to me,” Camerota bluntly put it, asking the lawyer to explain to their audience why his client would continue to attend parties where alleged drunken groping and gang raping was going on:
“How is any of this possible? How is it possible that if she saw any of these things she would continue to go to house parties like this?” Camerota asked the obvious question. Avenatti bristled at being actually asked a real question for once.
“Well first of all, my client is 100 percent credible!” he snarled. Avenatti claimed he wanted an FBI investigation into Swetnick’s story, and he had offered the Senate committee to question his client in a committee hearing.
But Camerota pressed Avenatti again to answer her question. “Just to my question, why would she ever go back? Why did she go to ten of those house parties?” she asked.
Of course Avenatti didn’t really give a straightforward answer, claiming that Swetnick was only aware of the spiked punch initially. After dodging yet another question by Camerota on corroborating witnesses, she laid out his client’s shady legal past:
About your client having been fully vetted, I want to ask you about some of the things because she has a complicated legal past. So let me just go through some of these things with you. According to the "Wall Street journal" in 1993 there was a criminal harassment complaint filed with state prosecutors against a podiatrist and his wife where she alleged there were repeated upsetting phone calls. March 2001, a restraining order was filed against your client by a former boyfriend, and roughly a decade ago she was involved in a harassment claim by her employer and was represented by the same law firm that now represents Christine Blasey Ford. Is there any connection between that law firm and you having found this client?
Avenatti again bristled at that question, complaining that he was “tired” of being accused of finding Swetnick. He again argued that Camerorta’s points were “invalid” in terms of if she was telling the truth about Kavanaugh.
Camerota defended her questions, saying that reporters were trying to find the truth by painting a full picture. She pressed Avenatti one more time before closing the interview, reading a quote Swetnick’s ex-boyfriend gave to Politico, where he accused her of threatening him and his family and was not credible, “at all.” “Does that give you any pause, Michael?” she asked.
Avenatti turned the tables saying that Swetnick’s ex was actually the one who wasn’t credible, accusing him of being a “fraudster.”
Co-host John Berman noted after the interview how political Avenatti was, saying, “It's hard to separate I think the politics surrounding Michael Avenatti with the claims being made.”
