TRUMP’S PICK ALL SET FOR SUPREME COURT JOB
Brett Kavanaugh gets vote of key senators despite sex accusations
PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, looked headed for a lifetime job on the United States Supreme Court on Friday after two crucial senators said that sexual misconduct accusations against the judge would not prevent them from voting to confirm him.
If Kavanaugh is approved in a final Senate vote, Trump will have achieved a victory in his drive to consolidate conservative dominance of the nation’s highest court and move the American judiciary to the right.
Two key senators, Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Manchin, both seen as swing votes, said they would support Kavanaugh, after weeks of debate about sexual violence and the nominee’s temperament that gripped the nation.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation would give conservatives a solid 5-4 majority in future legal battles on contentious issues such as abortion rights, immigration, industry regulation, presidential powers, and LGBT rights.
A sharply partisan battle over the nomination became an intense personal and political drama when university professor Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were high school students in Maryland in 1982.
Collins, in remarks on the Senate floor explaining her decision to back Kavanaugh, said Ford’s accusations against him “fail to meet the more-likely-than-not standard”.
As protesters in a Capitol Hill hallway shouted, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Manchin said a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe, which did not find corroborating evidence of Ford’s accusations, was thorough.
“I believe Dr Ford. Something happened to Dr Ford. I don’t believe the facts show that it was Kavanaugh, but I believe something happened,” Manchin said.
The only Republican to vote against Kavanaugh, Senator Lisa Murkowski, said on the Senate floor on Friday that her decision was “agonising” but after watching Kavanaugh’s Senate testimony she “could not conclude that he is the right person for the court at this time”.
About 100 demonstrators were arrested on Friday in Senate office buildings, the Capitol Building, and outside the Supreme Court, the US Capitol Police said.
More than 300 were arrested on Thursday.