The Kavanaugh confirmation circus has come to Tiverton

The phone calls started at around 9 p.m. Wednesday night to Marie LaRocca’s home in Newport.

“One of them was a robocall saying ‘Jeffrey Catalan, you piece of sh*t.’ Oh my God, you should have heard them,” LaRocca said.

″‘You’re a drug addict crawled from under a rock.’ I don’t know if that was somebody disguising their voice but it sounded like a robocall.”

LaRocca, 68, who was diagnosed with a genetic form of lung cancer last December, said she finally got to sleep around 2 a.m. And she still had no idea why she was suddenly being bombarded by calls for Jeffrey Catalan. Again.

For the record, LaRocca doesn’t know a Jeffrey Catalan, the name on a Twitter account singled out during a nomination hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh Tuesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing. Late Wednesday, the committee released a 45-page transcript detailing allegations of a sexual assault on a boat in Newport Harbor in August 1985. The accusations were reported to the office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)

The transcript redacts the name of the “Rhode Island man” who recently called Whitehouse’s office to make the allegation that a woman he knew was raped by two “heavily inebriated men” she met at a local bar on a 36-foot maroon and white boat in Newport Harbor. Enough details about a Twitter account in the constituent’s name were revealed in the interview transcript that media reports soon traced the identity of the constituent to a Twitter account started in June 2018 for Jeffrey Catalan based in Tiverton. The account holder is described as “Graphic Artist, Artist, photography and writer. Hippie, First Responder, Father and Grandpa and proud of it.”

Do everyone who is going crazy about what I had said I have recanted because I have made a mistake and apologize for such mistake

— Jeffrey Catalan (@JeffreyCatala16)September 26, 2018

A tweet from the account Tuesday at around 9 p.m. appears to have recanted the allegation.

LaRocca said that when she first got her landline six years ago, she received numerous calls from credit card collection agencies asking for Jeffrey Catalan. They stopped after about a year.

“I thought maybe somebody was still trying to collect money off the guy from six years ago,” she said.

An internet search of Jeffrey Catalan of Tiverton turns up LaRocca’s landline number in Newport.

The Daily News reached LaRocca at around 8 a.m. Thursday. Her voice was groggy but she said she was just getting up anyway after her sleep-deprived night. LaRocca said she has been doing OK with her cancer treatment. “I never smoked a day in my life,” she said.

“I’m glad I know what the hell is going on because I was going to call the cops today,” she said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to resume Kavanaugh’s nomination hearing Thursday at 10 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building 226 in Washington. The committee will hear testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who has publicly alleged that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982. Two other women have also come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct

Whitehouse’s office responded this morning to a request for comment with the following:

“The Senator received an allegation which was forwarded to the FBI for further evaluation and investigation. Out of respect for the privacy of those involved, the Senator declines comment.”

“Isn’t it crazy?” LaRocca said of the frenzy surrounding the Kavanaugh hearings. “What are they doing to this guy? This is ridiculous.”