Kavanaugh’s portrayal of his drinking in college did not square with what Ludington remembered: a college classmate who would drink so much that he was completely “shit-faced” by the end of an evening. The Kavanaugh whom Ludington had known would slur his words and be belligerent. To see Kavanaugh spinning his college drinking in such a misleading way made Ludington decide to speak out. “I simply wanted to say, ‘This is what I do know: the idea that Brett was never blacked out is preposterous,” he later recalled. “Because you don’t get as drunk as he got and remember everything.”
Despite the occasional concessions—“Sometimes I had too many beers,” for example, and the apology to Renate Dolphin—many of Kavanaugh’s classmates from both Yale and Georgetown Prep felt he had shown a lack of candor. Like Ludington, they had observed Kavanaugh drunk and seemingly out of control at times. They had been that drunk themselves and believed they would admit it under the same circumstances. Anything less, these people felt, would be fundamentally dishonest—an unforgivable trait for a Supreme Court candidate.
On September 30, the Sunday after the contentious hearings, Ludington put out a statement. “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. I would be a hypocrite to think so,” Ludington wrote. “However, I have direct and repeated knowledge about his drinking and his disposition while drunk. And I do believe that Brett’s actions as a 53-year-old federal judge matter.”
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