“A couple of times I made eye contact with Mark and thought he might try to help me, but he did not.”

This line, from the opening remarks offered by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — the psychology professor whose allegations of sexual violence against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh precipitated Thursday’s hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee — refer to Mark Judge, the high school friend of Kavanaugh’s who was in the room where the attack on Ford is said to have happened. Famously, Judge was not physically present at Thursday’s hearings, having secreted himself away from prying eyes at a hideaway in Bethany Beach, Delaware.

He was on everyone’s mind, however — and everyone’s lips.

In fact, Mark Judge may have been the most talked about person in the committee’s chamber not named “Ford” or “Kavanaugh.” The near constant mention of his name made it difficult to argue that he should not somehow be there, to answer some pertinent questions.


Judge is an author and sometime journalist, best known for a memoir titled “Wasted” in which he describes his many years as a booze-soaked wastrel — a lifestyle he and Kavanaugh shared. More importantly, he is the missing piece of the puzzle of what happened between Ford and Kavanaugh many years ago, the one person whose sworn testimony could either confirm Ford’s claims or provide Kavanaugh with an exculpatory witness.

For reasons known only to them, those with the greatest interest in clearing Kavanaugh’s good name — the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Kavanaugh himself — have gone to great lengths to ensure that his account will never be heard. The committee’s majority declined to subpoena Judge ahead of this week’s hearings. Kavanaugh, throughout yesterday’s proceedings, consistently waved off any effort to allow Judge to tell his story in an open hearing.

“Mark Judge should be subpoenaed from his Bethany Beach hideaway and required to testify under oath, but he has not,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) at yesterday’s hearings. A motion offered Friday by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to subpoena Judge’s testimony failed on an 11-10 party line vote.