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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was once questioned by police after a bar brawl, during which he was accused of throwing ice on someone, according to the New York Times.

Back in 1985, Kavanaugh, then a junior at Yale University, was involved in an altercation with 21-year-old Dom Cozzolino. According to a New Haven Police Department report obtained by the Times, Cozzolino told police that Kavanaugh had thrown ice at him "for some unknown reason."

A friend of Kavanaugh's, Chris Dudley, then threw a glass at Cozzolino, hitting his ear, a witness told police. Cozzolino was treated at the hospital for bleeding from his right ear.

Kavanaugh and Dudley were taken in for questioning, according to the police report. Dudley denied the allegation against him. The report also noted that Kavanaugh did not want to say whether "he threw the ice or not."


The police report did not say whether anyone was arrested over the incident, per the Times. It also did not indicate whether charges were filed.

Charles "Chad" Ludington, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh's, described the incident to the New York Times, saying it took place after a UB40 concert.

Kavanaugh, Dudley and Ludington were among a group of people who noticed a man resembling the lead singer of UB40, Ali Campbell. After the man saw the group looking at him, he told them to stop, adding in an expletive, Ludington said.

Kavanaugh cursed and "threw his beer at the guy," Ludington told the Times.

According to Ludington, the man "swung at Brett," and Dudley then "took his beer and smashed it into the head of this guy."

Ludington said he tried to pull Dudley back, while other people tried to restrain the other man.

"I don’t know what Brett was doing in the melee, but there was blood, there was glass, there was beer and there was some shouting, and the police showed up," he told the Times.

Ludington, now an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, released a statement over the weekend saying Kavanaugh "has not told the truth" about his drinking habits in his younger days.

"On many occasions, I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption," Ludington wrote. "When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive."

In the face of sexual misconduct allegations that date back to high school, Kavanaugh has downplayed his drinking.

"Yes, we drank beer," he told senators last week when asked if he drank alcohol in high school. "My friends and I, the boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer. The drinking age, as I noted, was 18, so the seniors were legal, senior year in high school, people were legal to drink... Sometimes probably had too many beers, and sometimes other people had too many beers."

WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.

Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.


The texts between Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, both friends of Kavanaugh, suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about Ramirez’s story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public. In one message, Yarasavage said Kavanaugh asked her to go on the record in his defense. Two other messages show communication between Kavanaugh's team and former classmates in advance of the story.

In now-public transcripts from an interview with Republican Judiciary Committee staff on September 25, two days after the Ramirez allegations were reported in the New Yorker, Kavanaugh claimed that it was Ramirez who was “calling around to classmates trying to see if they remembered it,” adding that it “strikes me as, you know, what is going on here? When someone is calling around to try to refresh other people? Is that what’s going on? What’s going on with that? That doesn’t sound — that doesn’t sound — good to me. It doesn’t sound fair. It doesn’t sound proper. It sounds like an orchestrated hit to take me out.”

The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated. Berchem's efforts also show that some potential witnesses have been unable to get important information to the FBI.

On Monday, a senior U.S. official confirmed that the White House has authorized the FBI to expand its initially limited investigation by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long as the review is finished by the end of the week. The New York Times first reported the change in scope.

NBC News reached out to Berchem for comment after obtaining a copy of a memo she wrote about the text messages. In a statement to NBC News, Berchem, a partner in the law firm Akin Gump, said: “I understand that President Trump and the U.S. Senate have ordered an FBI investigation into certain allegations of sexual misconduct by the nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I have no direct or indirect knowledge about any of the allegations against him. However, I am in receipt of text messages from a mutual friend of both Debbie and mine that raise questions related to the allegations. I have not drawn any conclusions as to what the texts may mean or may not mean but I do believe they merit investigation by the FBI and the Senate."

Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegation by Ramirez as well as accusations by Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school and by Julie Swetnick that Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s.

Berchem, 51, a graduate of Yale and a Connecticut resident, reached out to Sen. Richard Blumenthal's office last week. Blumenthal, a Democrat, sits on the Judiciary Committee.

“We heard from Kerry late on Thursday and submitted her summary to the Judiciary Committee early Friday,” a spokeswoman for Blumenthal said in a statement to NBC News. “After we were made to jump through several hoops that delayed our moving forward, it became clear that the majority Committee staff had not turned this summary over to the FBI and, in fact, had no intention of turning it over to the FBI. With our assistance, Kerry submitted her summary to the FBI herself.

George Hartmann, a spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said that “the texts from Ms. Berchem do not appear relevant or contradictory to Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony."

"This appears to be another last-ditch effort to derail the nomination with baseless innuendo by Democrats who have already decided to vote no," Hartmann said.

Berchem's texts with Yarasavage shed light on Kavanaugh’s personal contact with friends, including that he obtained a copy of a photograph of a small group of friends from Yale at a 1997 wedding in order to show himself smiling alongside Ramirez 10 years after they graduated. Both were in the wedding party: Kavanaugh was a groomsman and Ramirez a bridesmaid at the wedding.

On Sept, 22nd, Yarasavage texted Berchem that she had shared the photo with “Brett’s team.”

But when Kavanaugh was asked about the wedding during a committee interview on Sept. 25th, he said he was “probably” at a wedding with Ramirez. Asked if he interacted with her at the wedding, Kavanaugh replied, “I am sure I saw her because it wasn’t a huge wedding,” but added that he “doesn’t have a specific recollection.” Lying to Congress is a felony whether testimony is taken under oath or not.

The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated.