Update Tuesday, Sept. 25:

Shreveport mayoral candidate Adrian Perkins will have his name redacted from a letter praising U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh after Perkins claimed his name was used without his permission.

Perkins said staffers for the Senate Judiciary Committee determined that his name was used in the letter without his consent. He shared the news in a Facebook post on his campaign page Monday night.

"The Senate judiciary has determined that my name was not authorized to be placed on the Kavanaugh letter of support," Perkins said on Facebook while sharing screenshots of an email exchange between him and members of the judiciary committee.

Perkins received the news from Alexandria Dietz, according to the email. Dietz is a legislative aide for the committee, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Attempts to reach Dietz and Perkins before publication were unsuccessful.

Original story:

Shreveport mayoral candidate Adrian Perkins said Monday that his name was used without his consent in a letter praising embattled U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Perkins was one of eight current or former members of the Harvard Law School's chapter of the Black Law Students Association who supposedly signed a letter commending Kavanaugh's work with students at Harvard Law School.

The letter was read aloud by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing Sept. 5.

According to the letter, Kavanaugh attended a panel March 27 along with another federal appellate judge to provide information to members of Black Law Students Association about clerkships.

The letter claims that Kavanaugh, who is a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington. D.C., said one of his priorities was "to encourage more students of color to apply for judicial clerkships."

"The judge not only graciously offered his time for that panel, but also has continued to mentor numerous Harvard students whom he taught or worked with in a number of capacities," the letter reads.

The text of the letter says that it was not intended as a statement from the Black Law Students Association as a whole but that the students who signed did so in their individual capacity and signed "to express appreciation for the Judge's enthusiasm on this issue and hope that his efforts will be taken into consideration."

Perkins, 32, denied in an interview that he gave permission for his name to be used in the document.

The candidate graduated earlier this year from Harvard Law School. A Democrat, he is one of eight candidates who will vie in the Nov. 6 election to become Shreveport's mayor.

Perkins said he was contacted by Harvard Law student Merve Ciplak via email Sept. 6, one day after the hearing at which the letter was read. Ciplak told Perkins that the Harvard Law Record was looking into the Kavanaugh document and that there was a "question of the support of some of the signers."

Perkins told Ciplak that he did not authorize the use of his name on the document. Attempts to reach Ciplak were unsuccessful.

Continued below

Perkins then wrote a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, the ranking minority party member of the committee, Sept. 10 stating that his name was used on the Kavanaugh document without his permission.

"I did not attend the BSLA event referenced, never had a class with or met Judge Kavanaugh, and did not authorize the use of my name in that capacity," Perkins wrote in the letter to the senators.

Perkins asked in the letter that his name be redacted from the Kavanaugh document or that his letter be entered into the record as well.

"Several of the other past presidents who are listed in that letter have also confirmed their names were listed without their consent," Perkins said Monday in an email to The Times.

Perkins declined to say whether he supported Kavanaugh, who during his time as a federal appeals judge in the District of Columbia was "significantly more conservative than that of almost every other judge on the D.C. Circuit," the Washington Post reports.

"I don’t know Judge Kavanaugh and haven’t had an opportunity to read his record or the hearings records. One-hundred percent of my attention has been focused on the future of Shreveport," Perkins said in an email.

President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh on July 9 to fill the seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Senate's Judiciary Committee held hearings earlier this month on the Kavanaugh nomination but has not voted on whether to recommend confirmation by the full Senate.

Over the weekend, a 51-year-old college professor in California, Christine Blasey Ford, alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in a suburban Maryland home in the early 1980s, while both were in high school, The Washington Post reports.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California, told the Washington Post in a story published Sunday. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”

The news about Perkins signature on the Kavanaugh letter was first reported by The Bayou Brief's Lamar White Jr. White previously ran CenLamar, a progressive blog, and claims to have known Steven Jackson, another Shreveport mayoral candidate, for nearly a decade.

After Jackson allegedly received a racially motivated threat in August, White donated to Jackson's campaign. White said that Jackson did not have prior knowledge about the article and that Jackson was not involved in his reporting about the Kavanaugh letter. White said he became aware of the letter following a tip by a reader in New Orleans.