Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination secures votes
WASHINGTON – Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Friday secured the support needed to win Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court as two Republicans and a Democrat who had waited to announce their votes rallied to the side of President Donald Trump’s nominee.
The announcement of support by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., capped a bitter partisan fight in which Kavanaugh fended off 11thhour, uncorroborated allegations of decades-old sexual misconduct.
In a key procedural vote earlier Friday, Flake, Collins and Manchin joined with the majority in a 51-to-49 vote to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination. Following the vote, all three senators indicated they plan to support Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a final vote scheduled for today.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Collins said Kavanaugh had “received rave reviews” for his 12 years as a federal appeals court judge and that the misconduct allegations against him failed to meet a standard of “more likely than not.”
Manchin, a red-state Democrat up for reelection next month, said in a statement shortly afterward that while he had reservations, he “found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him.”
Earlier in the day, Flake also indicated that he plans to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation on Saturday “unless something big changes,” which he said
he doesn’t expect.
The final confirmation vote, scheduled for Saturday, needs support from at least 50 senators. Vice President Mike Pence could cast the tie-breaking vote if necessary.
Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, a move that triggered an intense partisan battle over the court’s future well before the first allegation of misconduct surfaced from Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a suburban Maryland home when they were teenagers.
The nomination collided with the #MeToo movement and midterm election politics and could alter the balance of power on the Supreme Court for a generation.
Confirmation of Kavanaugh would be a crowning achievement for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who blocked a Democratic nominee to the court for more than a year and has muscled dozens of appeals and district court nominees through the Senate.
In Friday morning’s procedural votes, all Democrats but Manchin said they were against elevating Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court.
Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who had previously announced he would vote against any nominee, called Kavanaugh’s nomination “one of he saddest, most sordid chapters in the long history of the federal judiciary.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska, was the only GOP senator to break with her party. Murkowski said she made up her mind to vote against advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination as she entered the chamber to vote Friday.
“I believe that Brett Kavanaugh is a good man,” she told reporters. “I believe he is a good man. It just may be that in my view he’s not the right man for the court at this time.”
Collins delivered a nearly 45-minute speech on the reasons behind her vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
“Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important. I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that, when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape. This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others. That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness,” she said.
“I listened carefully to Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee. I found her testimony to be sincere, painful, and compelling. I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life. Nevertheless, the four witnesses she named could not corroborate any of the events of that evening gathering where she says the assault occurred; none of the individuals Professor Ford says were at the party has any recollection at all of that night,” Collins said.
“Judge Kavanaugh forcefully denied the allegations under pen- alty of perjury. Mark Judge denied under penalty of felony that he had witnessed an assault. PJ Smyth, another person allegedly at the party, denied that he was there under penalty of felony. Professor Ford’s life-long friend Leland Keyser indicated that, under penalty of felony, she does not remember that party. And Ms. Keyser went further. She indicated that not only does she not remember a night like that, but also that she does not even know Brett Kavanaugh,” she said.
After Collins finished speaking, McConnell led the chamber in applause.
He then went over and shook her hand, as did several other GOP senators. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who presided over Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, gave her a giant bear hug.