New Brett Kavanaugh Accuser Hires Top Sexual Assault Case Laywer

A second woman has accused Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, New Yorker magazine journalists Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer posted online Sunday night, and reports on Monday say that the new accuser—Deborah Ramirez, 53, of Boulder, Colorado—has hired one of country’s top lawyers specializing in sexual assault cases. Kavanaugh was already facing an accusation of attempted rape from a Palo Alto University psychologist, Christine Blasey Ford, who says that Kavanuagh assaulted her when she was 15 and he was 17 and a student at an elite Maryland prep school. Ramirez was a Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh, and says the incident took place when both were undergraduates there. In the New Yorker article she told Farrow and Mayer that Kavanaugh “exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away." “I didn’t want any of this,” she told the reporters. “But now I have to speak.” The article also said that Ramirez, who works as a volunteer at a support center for victims of domestic violence, had hired former Boulder District Attorney Stanley Garnett to represent her. But according to a report on Twitter by Colorado Sun reporter Jesse Aaron Paul, Ramirez has also hired attorney John Clune, also of Boulder, who has represented alleged victims in some of the country’s highest-profile sexual assault cases of recent years. According to his official biography, Clune represented accusers in civil lawsuits against NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, and Major League Baseball pitcher Johan Santana. Clune has also represented two women in separate cases who have brought sexual assault allegations against NFL star quarterback Jameis Winston, including currently, an Uber driver who says that Winston “placed his fingers between her legs and pressed them firmly against her vagina over her yoga pants” when he ordered her to stop at a drive through fast food window.  In another case, Clune sued the University of Oregon for failing to protect its students, after it admitted a men’s basketball player who, according to The Washington Post, had already been accused of sexual assault at another institution. The basketball player then went on to allegedly instigate a gang-rape at Oregon. The hiring of Clune suggests that regardless of the outcome of Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation process, he could ultimately face a civil lawsuit over the sexual assault allegations by Ramirez. U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain / John Clune Twitter