Yale Roommate Says Kavanaugh Lied Under Oath; Senators to Start Reading FBI Report Tomorrow Morning; McConnell Takes Key Step Toward Vote on Kavanaugh Nomination
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon. Here's our breaking news. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moving Brett Kavanaugh's nomination forward, a final vote could take place on Saturday. That is as Brett Kavanaugh's Yale roommate is speaking out. And what he said on CNN just a little while ago is really pretty stunning. He said he thinks Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her is telling the truth and he said Kavanaugh lied under oath about his drinking and about the meaning of some clearly sexual references in his yearbook, but has he said this to the FBI? No, because they have not interviewed him. Not for this investigation or he says for any of the other investigations over the years.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, BREAKING NEWS SHOW HOST: You say that Judge Kavanaugh lied under oath when he testified before the Judiciary committee last week. Can you explain how you know that he lied?</s>JAMIE ROCHE, BRETT KAVANAUGH'S FRESHMAN YALE ROOMMATE: I can. I wasn't able to watch the testimony. I was in an airplane, but I read the testimony the next day and I was struck as I was reading it that you know, I know Debbie. And --</s>COOPER: Debbie Ramirez.</s>ROCHE: Debbie Ramirez and I know from my experience with her that at least from my perspective, there is zero chance that she is making up the story and I heard Dr. Blasey Ford's or read Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony and heard some of it later. You know, I believe that she is telling the truth, but then when Brett started saying things about his drinking and his use of certain words, sexually oriented words, I knew he was lying, because he was my roommate. We were in a room together. Our beds were ten feet apart for a couple of months. What struck me and made me more interested in speaking out about it is not only did I know that he wasn't telling the truth, I knew that he knew that he wasn't telling the truth.</s>COOPER: You say that he was a, I'm quoting you, a notably heavy drinker even by the standards of the time. That is obviously not sort of how he described himself. Just since this is knowledge you say you specifically have, can you describe what you mean when you say he was a notably heavy drinker?</s>ROCHE: Well, sure. This is a time not long after animal house was shown, and people drank a lot. He went to parties and drank beer, many, many people did, but there were even within that environment there were people who were loud drunks, who are sloppy drunks, who were belligerent drunks. But even by those standards my memory of Brett was that he was -- he was on the far edge of this. He was notably heavier in his drinking than other people.</s>COOPER: Can you -- I don't know if there's any specific examples or can you say how often was this just something on weekends? I've read some accounts that there was a keg in the main room of the room that you -- the suite of rooms that you had between the three roommates.</s>ROCHE: You know, it was an awful long time ago. I can't say he was drunk on this date or not. But I can tell you that my recollection of my experience with him was that he was drunk frequently, that it wasn't drunk to the point of having trouble getting up every month or two, it was frequently. I would say with some confidence it was at least once, maybe twice on the weekends. It may have even been during the week. I was listening to the radio, gosh, I want to say a week ago and they were talking about Brett having been interviewed by the FBI backgrounds done on five or six occasions prior to this. And it struck me that you know, I was his freshman year roommate. If you wanted to know how somebody behaved in college, which is a time where especially that transition from high school to college where people are likely to have done something that expressed thing that might have been a problem, that they would have contacted me, right? Five or six FBI interviews. Now, I started talking to friends. I said is this just sloppy work or why would somebody not contact a freshman college roommate? His only freshman college roommate to try and figure out what this guy was like. And this person was quick to say listen, the FBI are good. They're good guys. They take it very seriously. They do the work that they're told to do. You know, if they didn't contact you, it's because whoever was doing the background check wasn't interested in what was going on at that time.</s>COOPER: So just for the record, you've never been contacted either now or in any past investigation?</s>ROCHE: I've never been contacted about Brett by the FBI ever.</s>COOPER: So you actually, for people to know the situation, it was you, Brett Kavanaugh and another roommate in this basically there were two bedrooms you and Brett Kavanaugh shared a bedroom and there was a common room, as well. Your bed was as you said, a feet away from his. Did you ever see him black out? He has testified that he was asked about blacking out. He said he didn't. He said maybe sometimes he went to sleep. Did you ever see him blackout?</s>ROCHE: You know, I didn't socialize with Brett, but being in the same room where he slept, I saw him when he arrived at home regularly and I saw him in the morning. And I can tell you that he would come home and he was incoherent, stumbling, he would sometimes be singing. He occasionally would wary I think it was an old leather football helmet. And he would throw up. And then in the morning, would have a lot of trouble getting out of bed. You know, I wasn't an angel back then either. There were times when I did the exact same thing. So we commiserated on this issue and so the answer to your question is yes, I saw him both what I would consider blackout drunk and also dealing with the repercussions of that in the morning.</s>LEMON: So much on to discuss right now. David Gergen, John Dean, and Asha Rangappa are here. Good evening, everyone. I appreciate you joining. Listen, we heard what he said, but in spite of what he said, it has been so short, Senators haven't even heard or seen I should say the investigation and the report. Mitch McConnell is moving forward.</s>DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. Well, he does what he says. He plays a real serious game of hard ball. Very objectionable in many regards, but he delivers. That is why he is majority leader.</s>LEMON: Why is he moving forward so fast?</s>GERGEN: To get it done. I don't really think he gives a damn about whether there is a lot of questions about it, you know, what he cares about is getting it done. We just heard from a man apparently struggling with his conscience whether he ought to come forward and do this TV interview or not. Took him a lot to do that. CNN had to check him out to make sure his reliability seemed strong. And I think he gave a remarkably credible statement about what happened in the freshman year at Yale. What's astonishing is that the FBI is disinterested in his tale. And the tales of at least 30 to 40 other people that these women have recommended go look at and talk about. And so we're going to wind up with tomorrow and then on a vote Friday, Saturday, is a situation in which I think the odds favor a confirmation unless somebody shows more backbone than we've seen. And the country's going to feel like we were had. You know, we thought this was, they were going to push through. They're going to have a full week. They've had five days including a weekend. They've had very little time. They've shut the investigation down and most importantly haven't gone to all these witnesses and when you've got a guy like Roche who said look I don't remember this. I can tell you this though, and he is lying about his drinking and that is relevant not only to whether he will would forget something like a relationship with Ford, an incident with Ford, it is also extremely relevant to his truthfulness in front of the committee under oath. So all of this is very disturbing.</s>LEMON: Asha, I want to follow up on some of David just said, he said the FBI seems uninterested or disinterested in speaking to people like James Roche. Why is that? Why wouldn't they contact him or someone like him?</s>ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: You mean right now or back when -- before? We --</s>LEMON: He said this time and also even in previous background checks he is never been contacted.</s>RANGAPPA: Yes. So I do think it's important to understand that these background checks typically go back 10 years. And so really the time when Judge Kavanaugh's college drinking would have been within the scope of the background check would have been in one of his earliest background checks, perhaps when you went to clerk for the federal courts or when he joined the Starr prosecutorial team. After that it would have covered later and later periods of his life. And so, you know, those college days, those references probably would not have been within the scope of those interviews. So that is just to the put that out there since those six background checks are mentioned frequently. In this one, I am you know, concerned that he hasn't been interviewed, because you want the FBI to interview people like this precisely so they can probe and make sure they get full context for what the person is saying. That they can not only get what they know, but explore things like motivation and biases and all the context in order to actually be fair to the person that the subject that they are speaking about. And I think what we need here is some transparency on exactly what the direction and restrictions were placed by the FBI in this interview, because in my opinion, I don't believe that the FBI would not follow leads that were logical if they had the freedom to do so.</s>LEMON: OK. John, do you think that there were restrictions, because remember, John, we were talking about before they were saying well, you know, the White House is controlling the investigation and they are determining the scope of the investigation and then there was an argument on the other side saying no, the FBI would never allow that. What do you think, John?</s>JOHN DEAN, FORMER NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: It got awfully murky on the front side of the investigation as to what their scope was, their mission, and a lot of confused and conflicting reporting. Don, I had a flashing thought that the FBI cut this short, because maybe Mr. Judge fessed up. He was there. His girlfriend said she had been told by him that this had happened. So that was one -- that was the -- that would be the most amazing result.</s>LEMON: That would certainly be a block buster.</s>DEAN: That it would be a blockbuster, but that could explain also why they didn't go further.</s>GERGEN: There is a rumor like that, John that is passing around on the Internet.</s>LEMON: It's not confirmed obviously. I haven't read it.</s>GERGEN: It's just a rumor. I have no reason to believe it to be true.</s>LEMON: Yes. And I think if -- do you think that the Senators have some idea with what's in this report?</s>GERGEN: I think they probably do, yes.</s>LEMON: That is why -- if anything like that was true, do you think they would be setting a vote?</s>GERGEN: You know, the words rigged and fake and sham have been so overused it's almost difficult to talk anymore what's going on in Washington, but there is no question, but that intentional restrictions were placed on this so-called investigation. And that we the public were not told about them. And I do think that going back, I think this question of transparency is really important to rebuild trust in a way we conduct our public business and to end frankly to preserve trust in the Supreme Court. This ought to be much more transparent. We ought to see the report tomorrow, we ought to see for ourselves, not just selective leaking from one side or the other taking a phrase and trying to make it into a big headline.</s>LEMON: Do you think, Asha seeing the report and knowing what happens with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, do you think seeing that report would help some people feel better about the results?</s>RANGAPPA: I do. Because that report would contain, a, what derogatory information, if any the FBI found among the people they interviewed. And they would also reveal, because it would lay out the contents of the interview that they had whether there were clearly other leads or other people referenced that would have been logical for them to follow up with and weren't. So you wouldn't be able to hide kind of the scope of what they were looking at and what any investigator might do at that point. Alternatively maybe it would make clear that this was really all they needed to know. That I think would go a long way. And I agree what is at stake right now is the institutional legitimacy of the Supreme Court.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>RANGAPPA: And to have half the country believe that it's politicized and the fix is in is really the last thing we need right now.</s>LEMON: John, how does the country react to this do you think having gone through something similar with Watergate?</s>DEAN: Well, I actually saw a justice put on the court during the Nixon years who had disassembled during his confirmation. Bill Rehnquist. It's sort of haunted his reputation with scholars. So it won't be good. As historians look back. I don't think they should jam this through and we're only having cloture vote initially. That is kind of a test vote. And who knows what will happen during the debate. That is where a lot of this might be flushed out.</s>LEMON: Yes. Thank you all. I appreciate it. Well, "The New York Times" says President Trump inherited $413 million from his father. He inherited a booming economy from President Obama, better to be lucky than good.