Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham

Graham, who will oversee the vetting of the nomination as chairman, tweeted Saturday that he will support Trump “in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.”

Graham’s comment contradicts his statements in 2018 and 2016 that a Supreme Court nominee should not be considered in an election year.

“If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election,” Graham said in 2018 at an event hosted by The

Atlantic magazine. Reminded that he was speaking on the record, Graham said: “Yeah. Hold the tape.″

Two years earlier, in the midst of the Garland battle, Graham was even more emphatic, urging listeners at a Senate Judiciary meeting to “use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president (elected) in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.’”

Despite those comments, Graham said Saturday that he supports moving forward on a new nomination because Democrats had changed the Senate rules to confirm more circuit court judges during Obama’s tenure, and because Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer “and his friends in the liberal media conspired to destroy the life of Brett Kavanaugh and hold that Supreme Court seat open.”

Kavananugh was narrowly confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2018 after a bitter, partisan fight in which Graham played a key role to advance Kavanaugh.