Republicans: Letters From Kavanaugh's Friends Clear Up The 'Mystery' Of 'Boofing'

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday they’ve gotten to the bottom of a pair of slang terms in Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh ’s high school yearbook.

“MYSTERY SOLVED: It turns out that ‘boofing’ and ‘the devil’s triangle’ aren’t so scandalous after all,” proclaimed the official Twitter account for the committee’s majority.

“Judge Kavanaugh was completely honest in his descriptions of both. Another swing and another miss from Senate Democrats .”

Senators pressed Kavanaugh during testimony last week about pages in his senior yearbook that included the phrases “Have You Boofed Yet?” and a reference to the “devil’s triangle.” The judge painted the entries as relatively innocent, telling lawmakers that the word “boof” “refers to flatulence” and that “devil’s triangle” was a “drinking game.”

Many people have disputed those definitions, however, noting that “boof” was a slang term in the 1980s for anal sex . “Devil’s triangle” has also been known to refer to sex between two men and one woman .

Kavanaugh’s past drinking habits were at issue during his ongoing confirmation battle as he faced accusations that he’d assaulted or harassed several women while drunk. Friends and acquaintances have said the judge, a former fraternity member, was part of a social circle known for its heavy drinking . Kavanaugh testified that he drank beer in school, but portrayed himself as a student who was more focused on academics and athletics  and never drank “to the point of blacking out.”

To support their declaration that Kavanaugh was “completely honest in his descriptions” of the questionable slang, Republicans cited three statements from Kavanaugh’s former high school classmates at Georgetown Prep who backed his definitions.

“We did not understand ‘Devil’s Triangle’ to have any sexual meaning,” reads one letter to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “It was simply a game that used cups or glasses of beer placed in the shape of a triangle.”

One letter, attributed to Donald Urgo Jr., states: “Brett’s testimony about the meaning of each term is entirely correct and consistent with my independent understanding.”

Several other classmates, however, have pushed back against Kavanaugh’s characterizations of the terms.

“Our senior yearbook pages were a place to have a little bit of fun with commemorating inside jokes,” Bill Barbot, who was in school with Kavanaugh, told The New York Times last week. “However, the spin that Brett was putting on it was a complete overstatement of the innocence with which they were intended.”

Kavanaugh’s former college roommate, James Roche, has also questioned the judge’s characterization of his behavior in his youth.

“Not only did I know he wasn’t telling the truth, I knew that he knew he wasn’t telling the truth,” Roche told CNN ’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday.

“I can tell you that he would come home and he was incoherent, stumbling, he would sometimes be singing … he would throw up and then in the morning have a lot of trouble getting out of bed,” Roche said.