Senators still back nominee
Oklahoma’s two U.S. senators were briefed Thursday on the FBI’s latest conclusions regarding controversial Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and came away more convinced than ever that he is the right choice for the nation’s highest court.
“There’s absolutely nothing that came out from that FBI (investigation) that hasn’t already been out,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Tulsa Republican, in a phone interview Thursday. “That investigation was really just stalling because Democrats are doing everything they can to stall.”
“I don’t have any doubt something happened to them,” Sen. James Lankford said of Kavanaugh’s accusers in a phone interview. “I just don’t have
any evidence it was Brett Kavanaugh and it would seem completely out of his character, based on every other person that’s testified on his behalf and who has done so for decades.”
The Senate has scheduled a procedural vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for Friday and a final vote could come as early as Saturday. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Senate, making a few moderate members of that party the key swing votes.
The support of Inhofe and Lankford has never been in doubt. The conservative senators have been outspoken backers of Kavanaugh, even as some of their Republican colleagues have withheld judgment following accusations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted women during drunken interactions in high school and college.
Kavanaugh has vehemently denied all allegations of wrongdoing and problem drinking, loudly dismissing them as evidence of a conspiracy by Democrats to tarnish his good name and reputation. Inhofe has made similarly conspiratorial claims, suggesting Kavanaugh accuser professor Christine Blasey Ford was working with Democrats.
“The mere fact is that she gave that information to the Democrats, they sat on it for two months and waited until just the time when it would be at the last minute and give them an excuse to delay,” Inhofe said Thursday. “And it worked! It was ingenious. But that makes me believe she was — that they were doing that together with the Democrats. Otherwise, why would that have happened?”
Lankford used a much softer tone in discussing the Ford accusations, saying all victims of sexual abuse should be listened to and there is “no way” he could vote for someone who had committed sexual assault or lied under oath. But he doesn’t believe Kavanaugh committed those crimes.
“I have great sympathy for people and they absolutely need to be heard if they make an accusation about sexual assault, everyone should take that very seriously. I’ve got to also set that against the mountain of evidence on the other side in this case,” Lankford said.
Inhofe and Lankford joined other Republican senators for a closed-door briefing on the FBI investigation Thursday morning. Lankford later spent two hours reviewing an FBI report. Senate Democrats also received a briefing Thursday morning and criticized the report as severely limited in scope.
“We had many fears that this was a very limited process that would constrain the FBI from getting all the facts,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “Having received a thorough briefing on the documents, those fears have been realized.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said, “What I can say is that the most notable part of this report is what’s not in it.”
A total of three women have accused Kavanaugh of wrongdoing. When asked if there is anything those women could have said to convince him to vote against Kavanaugh, Inhofe said he couldn’t think of anything. FBI background checks on Kavanaugh have come up clean, he noted.
But Inhofe said one accusation of sexual assault, if backed by evidence, could have changed his mind.
“Well, I think initially, one would be enough,” he said. “If Dr. Ford had come in initially and made those same statements that she made and she had witnesses that would have shown those things to be true then yeah, I would have had to evaluate— further evaluate — that nominee.”
Lankford said the FBI report found witnesses to interactions between Ford and Kavanaugh could not corroborate Ford’s accusations.
“This is not he said, she said. This is he said, she said, they said. That makes it much harder. If it was just he said, she said, you’ve got to look at it a little bit different,” Lankford said.
Inhofe often speaks about the Kavanaugh debate in terms that go far beyond the nominee or even the Supreme Court. If Kavanaugh had been forced to withdraw, the standard of innocent until proven guilty would be overturned for the first time in American history, the senior senator said Thursday.
“If that works, you can depend on that same strategy being used. You’ll get people coming forth with fabricated accusations that are not corroborated and (they) can still affect a change by doing that. I think that would be a very dangerous thing to do. It would just give a nod of approval that you could accuse anyone of anything and that’s not America,” Inhofe said.