Kavanaugh Was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985 - The New York Times
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Credit Credit Erin Schaff for The New York Times
NEW HAVEN — As an undergraduate student at Yale, Brett M. Kavanaugh was involved in an altercation at a local bar during which he was accused of throwing ice on another patron, according to a police report.
The incident, which occurred in September 1985 during Mr. Kavanaugh’s junior year, resulted in Mr. Kavanaugh and four other men being questioned by the New Haven Police Department. Mr. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Mr. Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him “for some unknown reason.”
A witness to the fight said that Chris Dudley, a Yale basketball player who is friends with Mr. Kavanaugh, then threw a glass that hit the man in the ear, according to the police report, which was obtained by The New York Times.
The report said that the victim, Dom Cozzolino, “was bleeding from the right ear” and was treated at a hospital. A detective was notified of the incident at 1:20 a.m.
Mr. Dudley denied the accusation, according to the report. For his part, speaking to the officers, Mr. Kavanaugh did not want “to say if he threw the ice or not,” the police report said.
The report referred to the altercation, which occurred at a bar called Demery’s, as “an assault.” It did not say whether anyone was arrested, and there is no indication that charges were filed.
Image
A police report after a bar fight in New Haven in 1985 named Brett M. Kavanaugh. Personal information has been redacted. Credit The New York Times Image Page 2 of the police report. Credit The New York Times
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. Mr. Dudley did not respond to phone and email messages. Reached by text message, Mr. Cozzolino declined to comment.
The outlines of the incident were first referred to in a statement issued on Sunday by Chad Ludington, one of Judge Kavanaugh’s college classmates and a member of the Yale basketball team.
“On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face,” Mr. Ludington said in the statement. Mr. Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University, said he came forward because he believed Judge Kavanaugh had mischaracterized the extent of his drinking at Yale.
Mr. Ludington said that he had been in touch with the F.B.I.
He said that the altercation happened after a UB40 concert on Sept. 25, when he and a group of people went to Demery’s and were drinking pints. At one point, they were sitting near a man who, they thought, resembled Ali Campbell, the lead singer of UB40.
“We’re trying to figure out if it’s him,” he said.
When the man noticed Mr. Ludington, Mr. Kavanaugh and the others looking at him, he objected and told them to stop it, adding an expletive, Mr. Ludington said.
Mr. Kavanaugh cursed, he said, and then “threw his beer at the guy.”
“The guy swung at Brett,” Mr. Ludington continued. At that point, Mr. Dudley “took his beer and smashed it into the head of the guy, who by now had Brett in an embrace. I then tried to pull Chris back, and a bunch of other guys tried to pull the other guy back. I don’t know what Brett was doing in the melee, but there was blood, there was glass, there was beer and there was some shouting, and the police showed up.”
Demery’s, which closed in 1994, was a well-known bar that served big slices of pizza and cheap beer, especially after 9 p.m. It drew a crowd that included “older Yalies and younger ones with good fake IDs,” according to thepolitic.org.
Image Chris Dudley, right, in his Yale yearbook photo, and in another 1987 yearbook photo in the back row center with the Yale men’s basketball team.Mr. Dudley, who after Yale went on to the N.B.A. and was the Republican nominee for governor of Oregon in 2010, has spoken out in support of Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination and disputed reports that he drank excessively.
Several Yale classmates, including a former roommate and Mr. Ludington, have described Judge Kavanaugh as sometimes aggressive when he was drinking.
Emily Bazelon reported from New Haven and Ben Protess from New York. Reporting was contributed by Robin Pogrebin, Rebecca R. Ruiz, Sarah Lyall and Steve Eder.
Be the first to know about big news. Sign up here for New York Times email alerts.
A version of this article appears in print on
, on Page
A
13
of the New York edition
with the headline:
At Beery Yale, Curses, Fists, Glass, Blood And a Student