Nine more women have accused a prominent US appeals court judge of subjecting them to inappropriate sexual conduct or comments.
The latest allegations against Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals go back decades and include women who met him at events, according to a Friday report in the Washington Post.
The accusations 67-year-old Pasadena, California-based judge include lewd comments and four women who say he touched or kissed them.
Christine Miller, a retired US Court of Federal Claims judge, said Kozinski grabbed her breasts during a car ride in 1986 after a legal community function in the Baltimore area.
She said it came after she declined his offer to go to a motel and have sex.
‘He said if you won’t sleep with me, I want to touch you, and then he reached over, and — this was the most antiseptic — he grabbed each of my breasts and squeezed them,’ Miller said.
Six women allege Judge Alex Kozinski (pictured in July 2014) subjected them to inappropriate sexual comments or conduct
Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told the Post that the judge talked about having just had sex and pinched her side and leg at a restaurant the night before they appeared together on a panel at her school in July.
A lawyer who was not identified said Kozinski approached her when she was alone at a legal event in Los Angeles in 2008 and kissed her on the lips and gave her a bear hug with no warning.
The newspaper said the woman’s husband confirmed the incident and said the couple didn’t think they could do anything because of the judge’s position.
Kozinski said in a statement through an attorney that many of the things being said about him were not true but he deeply regretted that his ‘unusual sense of humor caused offense or made anyone uncomfortable.’
‘I have always tried to treat my male and female clerks the same,’ he said.
Kozinski was chief judge of the 9th Circuit, the largest federal appeals court circuit in the country, from 2007 to 2014. He is known for his irreverent opinions and his clerks often win prestigious clerkships at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 9th Circuit has opened a misconduct inquiry that was transferred Friday to the Judicial Council of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
Last week, The Post reported that six former clerks or more junior staff members accused Kozinski of inappropriate behavior, including showing them pornography.
Judge Alex Kozinski is pictured in this file photograph from September 22, 2003
Heidi Bond, who clerked for the judge from 2006 to 2007, told the newspaper she recalled three instances in which he asked her to look at images of naked people.
She said one set of images was of college-age students where some were ‘inexplicably naked while everyone else was clothed.’
Another set was a type of digital flip book that allowed users to mix and match heads, torsos and legs to create an image of a naked woman.
Bond said the judge asked if she thought the pornography was photo-shopped or if it aroused her sexually.
‘I was in a state of emotional shock, and what I really wanted to do was be as small as possible and make as few movements as possible and to say as little as possible to get out,’ said Bond, now 41.
Kozinski, who is 67 and still serving as a judge on the court, said in a statement to the newspaper that he has had more than 500 employees in his chambers over a 35-year career as judge.
‘I would never intentionally do anything to offend anyone and it is regrettable that a handful have been offended by something I may have said or done,’ he said.
A spokesman for the court, David Madden, referred further comment to Chuck Winner of Winner & Associates. Winner did not immediately return a request for comment.
Kozinski is a prominent judge who was chief judge from 2007 to 2014 of the 9th Circuit, the largest federal appeals court circuit in the country.
He is known for his irreverent opinions and his clerks often win prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court.
The Post interviewed Bond and Emily Murphy, a law professor who worked for a different judge on the 9th Circuit, in on-the-record interviews. The four other women in the first report were not named out of fear they might face retaliation.
Murphy said she was discussing training regimens with other clerks at a San Francisco hotel in 2012 when Kozinski approached her and said the gym in the 9th Circuit courthouse was nice because other people were seldom there.
He then said if that were the case, she should work out naked, according to Murphy and two others present at the time who spoke to The Post.
The newspaper interviewed another former clerk of the judge who said he showed her porn; she declined to provide specifics out of fear the judge could identify her.
The women did not file formal complaints at the time.
In 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that Kozinski had an email list that he used to distribute crude jokes to and he had a publicly accessible website that contained pornography.
A judicial investigation found that Kozinski did not intend for the material to be accessed by the public.
The 9th Circuit courts in San Francisco has clashed repeatedly with President Donald Trump.
Judges in the circuit have blocked both of Trump’s bans on travelers from a group of mostly Muslim countries and halted his attempt to strip funding from so-called sanctuary cities.
Kozinski joined four fellow conservative judges in an opinion in March that did not mention Trump by name, but said ‘personal attacks’ on judges who blocked the administration’s first travel ban were ‘out of all bounds of civic and persuasive discourse.’