WASHINGTON — Charles Ludington, a classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at Yale University, will provide information to the FBI on Monday, he confirmed to NBC News.
News of Ludington's involvement was first reported by The Washington Post, which said he planned to give a statement to the FBI at its field office in Raleigh, North Carolina, "detailing violent drunken behavior by Kavanaugh in college."
In a copy of his statement given to The Post, Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University, described Kavanaugh as a "belligerent and aggressive" drunk.
"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 and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail," the statement said.
During his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Kavanaugh was repeatedly asked about his drinking habits in high school and college and denied having a problem.
In his statement, however, Ludington wrote that "if he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences."
On Sunday, a member of Ford's legal team told NBC News that Christine Blasey Ford, one of Kavanaugh's accusers, and her lawyers have not been contacted by the FBI in the days since President Donald Trump ordered on Friday a supplemental FBI background investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations she and others have made against Kavanaugh.
A senior U.S. official confirms to NBC News that the White House counsel's office directed the FBI to interview the following witness list of four: Kavanaugh friends Mark Judge and P.J. Smyth, Leland Keyser, a friend of Ford's who Ford says was at the party, and Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her when they were both students at Yale University.
While the FBI will examine the allegations of Ford and Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, who has accused Kavanaugh of engaging in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s, isn't on the list of those to be interviewed by the agency, people familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
Nothing prevents the FBI from talking to witnesses who come forward, such as Ludington. But it's not clear what, if anything, the FBI can do with the information he provides, given that Kavanaugh's drinking at Yale is not an issue the White House has authorized the FBI to investigate.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, an undecided vote on Kavanaugh who supported calls for a renewed FBI investigation, told NBC News in a statement Monday that she is "confident that the FBI will follow up on any leads that result from the interviews."
