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Who is Mark Judge, author of ‘Wasted’ and Brett Kavanaugh’s drinking buddy from high school?

The writer of ‘Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk’ is alleged to have been present when the Supreme Court nominee committed sexual assault

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Mark Judge outside a friend's home in the seaside holiday village of Bethany Beach. Photo: The Washington Post

In the allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, one other name recurs: Mark Judge.

Christine Blasey Ford was the first woman to come forward to accuse US President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court of sexual misconduct earlier this month, throwing into doubt what had been his almost certain confirmation process.

Ford contended that Judge, Kavanaugh’s high school friend and author of Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk, an autobiographical account of debauchery at the elite Washington boys school Georgetown Prep, was in the room when Kavanaugh forced himself on her at a party.

On Wednesday, Julie Swetnick, the third woman to come forward, said that Judge, along with Kavanaugh, was part of a group of young men who would “cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang-raped’.”

Kavanaugh has denied Ford and Swetnick’s accusations – as well as those of another woman, Deborah Ramirez, that while he and Ramirez were at Yale University he thrust his genitals in her face, and “caused her to touch it without her consent”.

Judge has also disputed Ford’s and Swetnick’s allegations, which both concern Kavanaugh’s behaviour in high school. But their claims have put the author – who in 2015 wrote about the “ambiguous middle ground” of sexual pursuit – firmly into the national spotlight.

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