Kavanaugh ‘Should Have Been Mad,’ Graham Says

A day after delivering a devastating denunciation of Senate Democrats, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Friday gave an impassioned defense of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“I’ve never heard a more compelling defense of one’s honor and integrity than I did from Brett Kavanaugh,” Graham told colleagues during a meeting of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. “He looked me in the eye, everyone in the eye, and he was mad — and he should have been mad … Everything I know about Judge Kavanaugh screams that this didn’t happen.”

That was a reference to sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, who currently is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The committee will decide later Friday on a motion to pass his nomination out of committee to the floor.

Kavanaugh is all but assured of moving on to the full Senate, where his chances of elevation to the nation’s highest tribunal are less certain.

Graham lambasted what he described as an orchestrated effort by Democrats to block Kavanaugh by encouraging baseless allegations and then hold the seat open.

“If we reward this, it is the end of good people wanting to be judges. It is the end of any concept of the rule of law.”

“If we reward this, it is the end of good people wanting to be judges,” he said. “It is the end of any concept of the rule of law. It’s the beginning of a process that will tear this country apart. And if I am chairman next year … I’m gonna remember this.”

Graham added: “If you try to destroy somebody, you will not get away with it.”

As to allegations that Kavanaugh assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when they both were in high school in the early 1980s, Graham said he believes something happened to her.

“But I don’t believe it was Brett Kavanaugh,” he said. “And as a prosecutor, you couldn’t get out of the batter’s box, because in America, before you can accuse somebody of a crime, you’ve got to tell ’em when it happened and where it happened.”

Graham recounted his work as both a prosecutor and defense lawyer. He said he has stayed up with gang-rape victims searching for the courage to testify. He talked about representing a young man in the Air Force charged with sexual abuse who almost killed himself before the case fell apart.

If Kavanaugh as a teenager had committed the offenses leveled at him, there would have been a similar pattern as an adult, Graham said.

“If you’re a gang-rapist when you are a sophomore and a junior in high school, you don’t let it go,” he said. “Every woman who actually knows Brett Kavanaugh has come forward to say that he is not that kind of guy.”

“He has been at the highest level of public service, under tremendous scrutiny — six FBI investigations, and we missed the sophomore-junior gang rapist? We didn’t miss it. It’s a bunch of garbage,” Graham said.

Related; Lindsey Graham Blasts Dems: ‘What You Want to Do Is Destroy This Guy’

Graham, who voted to confirm both of the justices then-President Barack Obama nominated, decried the breakdown in deference nominees traditionally received in the Senate. He noted that former Republican South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond voted to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that former South Carolina Democrat Ernest “Fritz” Hollings voted to confirm Antonin Scalia.

Graham noted that he ran against President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination for president and “ran out of adjectives to describe” what he thought of his opponent’s campaign. But Trump won, Graham pointed out. As president, the senator added, he gets to nominate judges.

“Would you have picked him? No,” Graham said. “But you lost the election. And that does have consequences. When I said it about Obama winning, I meant it.”

Watch Graham’s remarks.