Kavanaugh Questioned in 1985 After Bar Fight — for Throwing Ice

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (shown above left) was questioned by authorities in 1985 following an altercation at a bar after a UB40 concert, according to The New York Times. He was accused of throwing ice on another individual in a tussle at a bar, along with his friend Chris Dudley (above right), who later became a player for the NBA.

Kavanaugh was an undergraduate in his junior year at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, at the time of the September 1985 incident. The New Haven Police Department questioned him and four others, but no one was arrested and no charges were filed.

“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,’” said the Times article.

The alleged victim of the incident, Dom Cozzolino, was reportedly hit in the ear by Dudley.

Cozzolino was treated at a local hospital. Dudley denied the accusation, and Kavanaugh “did not say if he threw the ice or not,” according to the police report, said The Times.

Related: Former NBA Player Chris Dudley Stands Up for His Friend Brett Kavanaugh

Chad Ludington, a classmate at Yale and a former basketball player for the university, brought up the decades-old altercation in a statement issued Sunday.

“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,” Ludington wrote of the New Haven incident.

In a memory that slightly differs from the ice-throwing police report to which The Times refers, Ludington said that Kavanaugh “threw his beer” at a man sitting at the bar — a man whom the group first believed might be the singer of the band UB40.

The man swung at Kavanaugh, and Dudley struck him with a bottle, Ludington said.

Kavanaugh’s drinking habits were a hot topic during last Thursday’s Senate hearing, when Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually assaulting her decades ago when the two were in high school, also testified.

“I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18- or even 21-year-old should condemn a person for the rest of his life,” wrote Ludington. “I would be a hypocrite to think so. However, I have direct and repeated knowledge about his drinking and his disposition while drunk.”

Ludington concluded by saying he would take his information about the nominee to the FBI.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment Monday, said The Times; Dudley did not respond to phone and email messages, either, and the man who went for medical treatment for his ear after the decades-old altercation, Cozzolino, also declined via text message to comment, The Times noted.

See more on the FBI investigation in the video below.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Chris Dudley, CC BY-SA 3.0, Cut Out/Collage by Sphilbrick)