Courtesy of Pam Martens
(Left to Right) Matt Schlapp, Brett Kavanaugh, Mercedes Schlapp (Facebook Photo)
Mark Judge is a conservative writer who, until the sexual assault allegations surfaced against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, had an unremarkable career. Despite the unlikelihood that Judge has squirreled away the funds from this writing career to pay one of Washington D.C.’s top white-collar criminal defense lawyers to represent him, or the kind of credible history that would entice such a legal engagement, Judge has secured an expensive lawyer with a remarkable pedigree.
Judge is the pivotal witness that the FBI will want to interview following President Donald Trump’s announcement yesterday that he will reopen the FBI’s background investigation of Kavanaugh. Trump caved to pressure yesterday from Republican Senator Jeff Flake, the American Bar Association, the Yale Law School (Kavanaugh’s alma mater) and every Democratic Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee who called for a reopened FBI investigation of Kavanaugh following multiple sexual assault allegations and college classmates stating on TV and to journalists that he lied under oath in the confirmation hearing on September 27. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the first Kavanaugh accuser to come forward, testified under oath on Thursday that Judge was in the locked room when Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her and joined with Kavanaugh in uproarious laughter as the assault occurred.
Judge is being represented by Barbara (Biz) Van Gelder of the law firm Cozen O’Connor. Van Gelder is listed in the 2019 The Best Lawyers in America and has previously represented high profile men in the George W. Bush administration, the same administration in which Kavanaugh served as counsel and staff secretary.
Barbara Van Gelder, Attorney for Mark Judge
Prior to joining her current law firm on February 1, 2016, Van Gelder worked for Wall Street’s go-to law firm Morgan Lewis from September 2007 to May 2011; and now defunct corporate law firm Dickstein Shapiro from May 2011 to January 2016 where she was known as one of its rainmakers. From 1983 to 1997, Van Gelder worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Washington D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office, a regional branch of the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal agency that oversees the FBI. That will give Van Gelder major insights into how to handle the FBI’s probe of Mark Judge. Thus far, Van Gelder has simply written letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee indicating that her client has no recollection of the event alleged by Dr. Ford to the outrage of Democratic Senators on that Committee who are former prosecutors and have stated that their ability to cross examine Judge under oath is essential to any serious effort to get at the truth.
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