1st Senate vote on Kavanaugh set
McConnell: FBI’s report in overnight
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set a threshold vote for Friday on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, moving the chamber toward a potential confirmation roll call over the weekend.
McConnell, R-Ky., touched off the process late Wednesday and announced that sometime during the night, the FBI would deliver the document regarding claims that Kavanaugh sexually abused women.
“There will be plenty of time for members to review and be briefed on the supplemental material” before Friday’s vote, McConnell said.
Lawmakers were planning to begin reading the FBI report today, with senators and a small number of top aides permitted to view it in a secure room in the Capitol complex.
Asked if it was appropriate for Trump to imitate Kavanaugh’s accuser, Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said “It’s not appropriate for me. … It’s something that I certainly would not feel comfortable doing and don’t.”
Earlier Wednesday, three influential Republicans, who together could decide whether Kavanaugh will sit on the Supreme Court, condemned comments by President Donald Trump that mocked one of the women who has accused his nominee of sexual assault.
The president’s mockery of the woman, Christine Blasey Ford, at a Mississippi campaign rally Tuesday injected still more uncertainty into the confirmation of Kavanaugh and heightened tensions as senators waited for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews from a supplemental background investigation into accusations against the nominee.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told reporters: “I am taking everything into account. The president’s comments yesterday mocking Dr. Ford were wholly inappropriate and in my view unacceptable.”
On NBC’s Today, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said, “There is no time and no place for remarks like that, but to discuss something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right.”
“I wish he hadn’t have done it, and I just say it’s kind of appalling,” Flake added.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters in the Capitol that the remarks were “just plain wrong.”
Those swift rebukes, and others from Democrats opposed to Kavanaugh’s confirmation, reflected the strained atmosphere that has settled over Capitol Hill as the Senate lurches toward a final vote on Kavanaugh that could alter the course of the Supreme Court. A White House official said Trump was merely “stating facts.”
Collins did not indicate that the comments would affect her final vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, which could come as soon as late this week. Flake said it would not: “No, you can’t blame or take it out on other people, the president’s insensitive remarks.”
Instead, the senators said they were waiting for the results of the FBI’s investigation into sexual misconduct claims.
Republican leaders expected to receive the file late Wednesday, setting the stage for the procedural vote Friday and a final confirmation vote Saturday. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said that scenario would be the “likely way to progress to the end of this and start healing up here.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined the condemnations of Trump’s comments when he took to Twitter to “plead with all” to stop attacks and “destruction of” Ford.
Asked if it was appropriate for Trump to imitate Kavanaugh’s accuser, Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said “It’s not appropriate for me. … It’s something that I certainly would not feel comfortable doing and don’t.”
The president, through press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would be able to address the issue further, Boozman said.
“I think part of that is just a lot of frustration. The Democrats seem to continue to move the goal post as far as his confirmation and this is a person that I believe will be confirmed in the very near future and will do a great job on the bench,” he said.
Flake has made it clear he intends to vote to confirm Kavanaugh if the FBI does not turn up any meaningful new information bolstering the accusations. Collins has said she remains undecided.
Besides Flake, Collins and Murkowski, Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia also have yet to announce how they will vote.
Trump’s tone toward Ford has shifted in the days since she first stepped forward with her story that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her more than 30 years ago when they were both teenagers. The president initially avoided criticizing her directly and said he would closely watch her testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But on Tuesday, before a cheering crowd in Mississippi, he dispensed with that reserve, deriding Ford’s emotional testimony of what happened that night.
“Thirty-six years ago this happened. I had one beer, right? I had one beer,” Trump said, imitating Ford.
“How did you get home? ‘I don’t remember,’” he said. “How’d you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’”
Ford has said that the incident happened in an upstairs room at a gathering of teenagers and that she is “100 percent” certain it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her, although she has acknowledged that her memories of other details of the evening remain unclear.
At the White House on Wednesday, Sanders batted back criticism of Trump’s remarks at the rally.
“It seemed to me that he was stating facts that Dr. Ford herself laid out in testimony,” Sanders said, adding that there had been no information made public that supported Ford’s accounts. Sanders also defended the White House’s handling of the FBI background investigation into the accusations, saying the administration had given senators what they asked for.
Still, a Republican who has forcefully defended Kavanaugh, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said he took no issue with the content of Trump’s speech but did not like the president’s delivery.
“I would tell him to knock it off — it’s not helpful,” Graham said at the Atlantic festival in Washington.
SENATE LEADERS
During a floor speech Wednesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reiterated his vow to hold votes this week on Kavanaugh’s nomination, saying: “It’s time to put this embarrassing spectacle behind us.”
He also took aim at Democrats, who have suggested that Friday might be too soon to vote and who have asked for a full briefing by FBI agents of their findings about accusations against Kavanaugh. McConnell characterized those requests as part of an ongoing effort “to move the goal posts” on Kavanaugh’s nomination by senators bent on delay.
“If my friends across the aisle had their way, the goal posts on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination would be in another time zone,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., fired back in remarks after McConnell, saying the weeklong delay to the let the FBI investigate came at the request of Republican senators who weren’t prepared to vote for Kavanaugh’s nomination.
“Man up and say it’s your decision, not ours,” Schumer said.
He also criticized Trump, calling the president’s comments at the Mississippi rally “beneath the office of the president and beneath common decency.” Schumer said Trump owes Ford an apology.
Lawmakers said that once the FBI report arrives, senators and a small number of top aides will be allowed to read it in a secure room in the Capitol complex. Republicans have said they are working under an agreement governing background checks dating from President Barack Obama’s administration, under which investigations are confidential and closely held.
Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said senators were expecting FBI agents’ reports, perhaps accompanied by a cover letter. But background checks do not traditionally contain investigators’ conclusions about who they believe is credible.
While some senators from both parties have said they’d like at least a summary of the findings to be released, Senate procedures call for such checks to be kept confidential, and it’s unclear what will be released, other than through leaks.
“None of that stuff’s public,” Grassley told reporters. “If you want people to be candid when they talk to the FBI, you ain’t going to make that public.”
In an interview, No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Richard Durbin of Illinois said McConnell was “hell bent on getting this done” this week.
Democrats also demanded that the FBI privately brief the Senate about the investigation before the chamber votes. McConnell rejected that request in a letter Wednesday to Schumer, saying Democrats would use it to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
OTHER ACCUSERS
As of Wednesday evening, the FBI has interviewed a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who alleges that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while both were in college.
A third accuser, Julie Swetnick, had yet to be interviewed, according to her attorney, Michael Avenatti.
Swetnick said last week in an affidavit that Kavanaugh was present at a house party in 1982 where she alleges she was the victim of a gang rape, a claim he vehemently denies.
But the FBI hasn’t interviewed Kavanaugh or Ford because it doesn’t have clear authority from the White House to do so, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Instead, the White House has indicated to the FBI that testimony from Kavanaugh and Ford before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is sufficient, said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing the sensitive matter.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the FBI is trying to force the issue and seek explicit approval from the White House to interview Ford and Kavanaugh. And it wasn’t clear why the FBI hasn’t yet talked to other people who have been recommended by lawyers or who have voluntarily stepped forward — or if the bureau would need explicit approval to talk with them, as well.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Wednesday that the lack of interviews with Ford, Kavanaugh and others “raises serious concerns that this is not a credible investigation and begs the question: What other restrictions has the White House placed on the FBI?”
The FBI declined to comment on the investigation or its timing.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are stepping up efforts to challenge Ford’s credibility by confronting her with a sworn statement from a former boyfriend who took issue with a number of assertions she made during her testimony last week.
Grassley cited the former boyfriend’s statement in a letter sent Tuesday night to Ford’s lawyers demanding that they turn over material that could be used to assess her veracity.
The former boyfriend told the Judiciary Committee that he witnessed Ford helping a friend prepare for a possible polygraph examination, contradicting her testimony un- der oath. Ford, a psychology professor, was asked during the hearing whether she had “ever given tips or advice to somebody who was looking to take a polygraph test.” She answered, “Never.”
But the former boyfriend, whose name was redacted from a copy of the sworn statement provided by a person supporting Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, said that when they were together in the 1990s he saw Ford use her understanding of psychology to assist her roommate of the time, Monica McLean, before interviews for possible positions with the FBI or the U.S. attorney’s office that might require her to take a lie-detector test.
“I witnessed Dr. Ford help McLean prepare for a potential polygraph exam,” the man said in the statement. “Dr. Ford explained in detail what to expect, how polygraphs worked and helped McLean become familiar and less nervous about the exam.”
McLean, a former FBI agent, denied the assertion Wednesday.
“I have never had Christine Blasey Ford, or anybody else, prepare me, or provide any other type of assistance whatsoever in connection with any polygraph exam I have taken at any time,” she said in a statement.
Ford’s camp also rejected the account.
“She stands by her testimony,” a member of her legal team said in a statement.