An aide for the Senate committee overseeing hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh resigned after a sexual harassment allegation against the staffer resurfaced.
The aide, Garrett Ventry — who’d been working on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s media response to the sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh — resigned Friday, though he denied the accusation against him.
Ventry had been fired as a social media adviser to a North Carolina legislator in 2017 for lying on his resume, NBC News reported Saturday.
But fueling his departure was an accusation of sexual harassment lodged against him by a female staffer of the North Carolina General Assembly.
“It was the chatter of the staff,” a source told NBC News. “The whole thing got turned into a he said, she said, and then Garrett was fired.”
Ventry, 29, rejected the accusation.
“While (Ventry) strongly denies allegations of wrongdoing, he decided to resign to avoid causing any distraction from the work of the committee,” said Judiciary Committee Spokesman Taylor Foy.
The committee, led by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), is mired in controversy stirred by a last-minute allegation by Christine Blasey Ford, a California college professor who claims that Kavanaugh, President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, attempted to rape her when they were teenagers.
Kavanaugh denies the allegation, and two men who Ford says were present during the incident have submitted sworn affidavits that it did not occur.
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