A woman who Michael Avenatti claimed backed his client Julie Swetnick’s allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has recanted her story and is accusing Avenatti, a potential 2020 presidential hopeful, of “twisting” her words.
The saga is laid out in a new report from NBC News, which interviewed Swetnick on Oct. 1, days after Avenatti released a sworn declaration in which she accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in the 1980s.
In an effort to bolster Swetnick’s allegations, Avenatti put NBC reporters in touch with the second woman for a phone interview on Sept. 30. He published her sworn declaration on Twitter on Oct. 2.
But according to NBC, the woman’s statements during the Sept. 30 interview were inconsistent with the declaration published by Avenatti.
The report comes in the wake of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley referring Avenatti and Swetnick to the Justice Department and FBI for an investigation into whether they conspired to make false statements to Congress regarding Kavanaugh.
Grassley cited Swetnick’s NBC News interview as an example of her back tracking on her initial claims about Kavanaugh.
In a sworn declaration provided to the committee through Avenatti on Sept. 26, Swetnick alleged that Kavanaugh spiked drinks at parties in the 1980s where girls were gang raped.
Swetnick claimed that Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, purposely caused girls “to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of boys.”
