‘Look at me when I’m talking to you’
U.S. senator credits protesters for decision to insist on FBI probe Democratic senators address a rally opposing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh Friday.
Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake issued a statement Friday morning announcing he was going to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Less than 10 minutes later, Flake got in an elevator up to the committee meeting where he would cast his vote to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate.
But two women held the elevator door open.
Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher told Flake that they had been sexually assaulted. They were enraged. “I have two children. I cannot imagine that for the next 50 years, they will have to have someone in the Supreme Court who has been accused of violating a young girl. What are you doing, sir?” said Archila, the co-executive director of a liberal group.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” said Gallagher, 23, as Flake looked toward the floor. “You’re telling me that my assault doesn’t matter.
“That what happened to me doesn’t matter. And that you’re going to let people who do these things into power.”
Flake eventually proceeded to the meeting in silence. But then he changed his mind on supporting Kavanaugh.
To the surprise of both Republicans and Democrats, Flake told the judiciary committee he would not cast a final vote in favour of Kavanaugh until the FBI conducted a “short” investigation of no more than a week into the sexual assault claims.
“I think that we ought to do what we can to make sure that we do all due diligence with a nomination this important,” Flake said.
Flake’s demand for an investigation, which had previously been called for by Democrats, was quickly echoed by other swing voters, such as Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. They made it clear that Republican leaders did not have the support necessary to immediately put Kavanaugh on the bench.
“I’ve ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file,” President Donald Trump said later. “As the Senate has requested, this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week.”
Kavanaugh said in a statement that he would co-operate with the probe, noting that he has already been interviewed by the FBI and had taken questions under oath from senators.
It is possible that Flake and the others will simply confirm Kavanaugh in a week’s time; Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the court in 1991 after a brief FBI investigation into sexual harassment allegations against him. But the investigation into Kavanaugh, and the delay itself, has the potential to derail a critical nomination that once seemed near-assured.
Trump was uncharacteristically subdued when he was asked about the matter shortly after Flake’s statement, although he said he had not been fully briefed.
“Well, I’m going to let the Senate handle that. They’ll make their decisions, and they’ve done a good job,” he said. Asked what his message is to swing voters Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins, he said, “There’s no message whatsoever. They have to do what they think is right. They have to be comfortable with themselves.”
The drama unfolded a day after the extraordinary committee hearing at which California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in 1982, when she was 15 and Kavanaugh was 17. She said she would never forget his laughter during the attack.
Kavanaugh responded with fury and belligerence, telling the committee that he has never assaulted Blasey Ford or anyone else. He said he was the victim of a Democratic conspiracy to destroy him.
Flake’s decision came after a series of huddles with Democratic colleagues, including his friend Sen. Chris Coons, in a private room beside the hearing room. Speaking to reporters later, he said he could not pinpoint who made him take his stand. But he seemed to give some credit to the protesters.
“There were a lot of people on the phone in email and text and walking around the Capitol. It’s been remarkable the number of people who saw Dr. Ford and were emboldened to come out and say what happened to them, including close friends,” he said, Bloomberg reported.
As it became clear that something was unfolding, senators murmured among themselves and journalists attempted to read their body language — as they did last year when another Arizona Republican senator, the late John McCain, was about to break ranks and unexpectedly vote against Obamacare repeal.
Kavanaugh faces sexual assault allegations from at least two other women who say they knew him in the 1980s. Deborah Ramirez, a Yale University classmate, alleges he caused her to touch his penis without consent during the 1983-84 school year. Speaking to the New Yorker magazine, she acknowledged she had significant gaps in her memory of the night when she alleges the assault occurred.
Julie Swetnick, who alleges seeing Kavanaugh have unwanted sexual conduct with girls at Washington-area parties between 1981 and 1983, said she was aware he had made efforts to “spike the punch” at the parties to make girls inebriated, and was present at a party where she was gang raped.
Kavanaugh called Swetnick’s allegations a “farce.”
The FBI will also be able to speak to Mark Judge, the Kavanaugh friend who Blasey Ford alleges participated in the attack. The Republicans who control the committee had rejected Democrats’ demands to force Judge, a self-described former “drunk,” to testify before the committee.
Judge said he did not want to testify publicly, but would cooperate with the FBI probe.