A 1992 column by now-Sen. Cory Booker detailing his “groping” of a high school friend has resurfaced as he pushes to delay Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings over a sexual assault allegation.

In the 1992 column for The Stanford Daily, then-Stanford University grad student Mr. Booker wrote about the New Year’s Eve incident in 1984 that he will “never forget.” In the column, titled, “So much for stealing second,” Mr. Booker said he was 15 when he fondled an intoxicated female friend.

“With the ‘Top Gun’ slogan ringing in my head, I slowly reached for her breast,” he wrote. “After having my hand pushed away once, I reached my ‘mark.’ Our groping ended soon and while no ‘relationship’ ensued, a friendship did. You see, the next week in school she told me that she was drunk that night and didn’t really know what she was doing.”

Mr. Booker said he was conditioned to believe that sex was “a game,” and that hooking up was best achieved through “luck, guile, strategy or coercion,” and lots of alcohol. He wrote about how his attitude toward sex dramatically changed after just a couple years at Stanford, and how his work as a peer counselor listening to the “raw truth from men and women discussing rape” was a real “wake-up call” for the future senator.

“I now see the crowds, no, not the spectators, but the thousands, the millions who are rarely seen or heard,” he said of sexual assault victims.

Mr. Booker, who said this week that it would be “irresponsible” for him to not consider a 2020 presidential run, has been recently ridiculed by conservatives after he appeared to dub himself “Spartacus” by revealing confidential records during the Judge Kavanaugh hearing. The senator now wants the FBI to investigate a claim by a woman who accused Judge Kavanaugh of trying to rape her more than 35 years ago before the hearings continue.

Paul Mulshine, a columnist for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, said Mr. Booker’s column has been circulating in conservative circles since 2013, when the Daily Caller ran a piece about it. It resurfaced on social media this week after the Democrat deemed Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser to be credible.

Mr. Booker’s office on Thursday strongly defended the column.

“This disingenuous right-wing attack, which has circulated online and in partisan outlets for the past five years, rings hollow to anyone who reads the entirety of Senator Booker’s Stanford Daily column,” a spokesperson for the senator told Fox News.

“The column is in fact a direct criticism of a culture that encourages young men to take advantage of women — written at a time when so candidly discussing these issues was rare — and speaks to the impact Senator Booker’s experience working to help rape and sexual assault survivors as a college peer counselor had on him,” the spokesperson said, Fox News reported.

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