Journalist Mark Judge, the high school friend of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has publicly claimed Democrats threatened and extorted him into potentially supporting Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault.
In an explosive interview with Martha MacCallum for Fox Nation, Judge said Democrat operatives combed through his well-documented history of alcoholism, something he chronicled in the 1997 book Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, as a means to blackmail him.
EXCLUSIVE: Mark Judge, friend and former classmate of Brett Kavanaugh, is speaking out for the first time on camera after his life was turned upside down by the Supreme Court confirmation fiasco.
Watch his must-see interview now on Fox Nation. https://t.co/r2GwbiHhpD pic.twitter.com/NafBi1d0Bq
— Fox Nation (@foxnation) March 22, 2024
“They thought, ‘Okay, if we can get Mark Judge involved in this, we can sink Kavanaugh. But we have to get Mark Judge involved in this,’” Judge told MacCallum.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh attends his ceremonial swearing in in the East Room of the White House October 08, 2018 in Washington, DC. Kavanaugh was confirmed in the Senate 50-48 after a contentious process that included several women accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“And they thought it would be easy,” continued Judge. “They thought, ‘Okay, this is an easy hit. We will get Judge involved. We will get him down there in front of the committee. He’s a recovering alcoholic. He’s got a past we can comb through for days and this will completely implode Kavanaugh.’”
Judge further alleged that operatives and Democrat allies pushed him to change his story and sink Brett Kavanaugh with the promise that he would be considered a “hero” if he confirmed Christine Blasey Ford’s story.
“Several people said, ‘Yeah, you jumped on the bed and broke things up. You prevented this. You’re the hero here. You say that and you’re home free,’” Judge said. “I had journalists who I had been friends with sending me emails: ‘Do it, Mark. Do it for humanity. Lie about this for humanity.’”
“Extortion and direct threats” were allegedly used to pressure him, Judge claimed.
“On September 24, 2018, my birthday, I got a call from a California number. They were brilliant enough to leave a message: ‘You like effing with people, Mark. I like effing with people, too. You better change your story,” he said.
Mark chose not to testify at the time, believing it would have just been a circus of senators utilizing his well-documented past of alcoholism to destroy his character.
“They had been researching stuff that I knew nothing about. I knew they would be bringing stuff up that I was not prepared for but they would make into a big deal,” he said.
Judge also feared for his mental health and admitted to having suicidal thoughts.
“When you have suicidal ideation, it’s terrifying. I wanted to be numb and disappear,” he said.
Since its release last week, the corporate media have been heaping praise on Christine Blasey Ford’s book, One Way Back: A Memoir, hailing it as a triumphant return to the events of 2018. During an appearance on The View, for instance, co-host Joy Behar even took a moment to scold male members of the audience for not applauding Christine Blasey Ford’s presence.
Conspicuously absent throughout all of the corporate media’s praise of Ford’s book are any mentions of Mark Judge’s 2022 memoir, The Devil’s Triangle (available on Amazon), in which he chronicled his experience behind the scenes, away from the media circus, finding himself in a Kafka-esque scenario as Democrat operatives and their media allies engaged in witness tampering, extortion, and outright cruelty in their quest to destroy an innocent man.
“At first I almost didn’t do the Fox Nation interview. It’s just too traumatic reliving that dark time. Yet I had questions,” Judge told Breitbart News on Tuesday. “Why was I referred to in Blasey Ford’s letter as ‘Mark G. Judge’? That’s an old journalism byline – like they were researching me. In my book, I argue Ford was using an oppo researcher all summer before the hit. Am I wrong? I’m only quoted in her book via government records – are they afraid of something?”
“Also, Ford told Ruth Marcus she thought about getting in touch with me in the summer of 2018 but ‘didn’t know how.’ Really? I’m a journalist who has lived in D.C. his entire life. She didn’t know how to contact me? All the suffering Christine Blasey Ford caused could have been avoided. This all could have been done in private. Her ‘team’ still refuses to answer my questions. I’ve been asking them for five years,” he added.
For the first week of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, everything appeared business as usual. Despite some brief theatrics from certain Democrat senators, it seemed the judge would coast to his rightful place as President Donald Trump’s second nominee to the Supreme Court. That all took a dark, sinister turn on the Sunday of September 16, 2018, when the Washington Post published an allegation from psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford claiming that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s, to which his longtime friend, Mark Judge, served witness. Blasey Ford notably did not recall when said sexual assault occured. As the Post detailed at the time:
While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.
Ford could not recall where or when the party occurred or how she returned home that night. Even more significant, Ford’s childhood friend, Leland Ingraham Keyser, said she had no recollection of being at the party Ford described and even had no memory of ever meeting Brett Kavanaugh. Mark Judge also said he had no recollection of such a party, telling the FBI under oath that he never saw his friend Brett Kavanaugh assault anyone during their time together in high school.
Despite intense protests and calls from leftists to ruin him, Brett Kavanaugh won the day and made it to the Supreme Court.
“At its dark heart, this was a witness tampering and extortion operation,” Mark Judge told Breitbart News last year. “I got a phone call from California on September 14, 2018, threatening to extort me. They were dumb enough to leave a message. and I gave it to the FBI.”
“Leland Keyser said she was told nasty things could be said about her if she did not back up Ford,” he added at the time. “I don’t know if Ford was involved in that or if it was others, but that’s all this was. Forget about the yearbooks, the teen slang, the stuff about the 1980s. They did opposition research and then tried to extort me and tried to witness tamper. That’s what it was. For people looking to simplify the fall of 2018, it was, exactly as Brett said, a well-orchestrated political hit. It was a crime.”
As Mark Judge previously recalled to Breitbart News, the past five years have been a difficult road for him, and he still suffers PTSD from the incident. As he says in his GoFundMe campaign, “I don’t think even today people know how deep or dark the hit on me was.” Fortunately, his book has given people a small insight into his terrifying experience.
— Mark Judge (@markgjudge) March 18, 2024