Cautiously Optimistic Republicans Press for Saturday Confirmation Vote

Senate Republican leaders on Thursday vowed to press ahead with the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh (pictured above left) to the Supreme Court, with a timetable that would result in a final vote on Saturday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference that the GOP has done everything possible to satisfy concerns about sexual assault allegations leveled at Kavanaugh, including agreeing to demands for the FBI to reopen its background investigation of the nominee.

“What we know for sure is that the FBI report did not corroborate any of the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh,” said McConnell (pictured above right). “And the second thing we know for sure is that there’s no way anything we did would satisfy the Democrats. They’ve always got a reason why they need the goal posts moved farther down the field.”

Kavanaugh, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, appeared set for confirmation after four days of hearings last month.

Then Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that seven weeks earlier she had received a letter from a constituent about a possible crime.

Eventually the accuser, California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, stepped forward to accuse Kavanaugh of trying to sexually assault her, while allegedly drunk, when they both were in high school in the early 1980s.

She and he both testified about her allegations before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary September 27. Two other women made allegations, but they did not testify. None of the witnesses the three women said would corroborate their claims did so.

Republican senators surrounding McConnell on Thursday said there is nothing in the new FBI report corroborating any of the allegations. The latest FBI report was the seventh background review the bureau has done on Kavanaugh since he entered public service in 1998 as a member of special counsel Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation of the Clinton administration.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) turned the process into a “demolition derby” the day after President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh on July 9, by vowing to oppose the judge at all costs.

“This is the 87th day. That’s three weeks longer than the average of the last three or four nominees to the Supreme Court,” he said. “So don’t tell me we haven’t spent enough time. Also, I feel very good about where this nomination is right now.”

Two holdout Republican senators, Arizona’s Jeff Flake and Maine’s Susan Collins, have sent positive signals about the thoroughness of the FBI investigation. Increasingly, a straight party-line vote looks likely. On Thursday, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) — a red state Democrat who had been undecided — told a local television station that she will vote “no.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Iowa) said Kavanaugh is one of the most qualified nominees in his 42 years in the Senate.

“I’m disappointed in what my Democratic colleagues are doing,” he said. “There’s no excuse for it, but they’re doing it.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said senators did not impose limits on the FBI. He said he and his colleagues spent hours reviewing the confidential report.

“We treated these documents, just as we’ve treated each and every allegation, with the utmost seriousness,” he said.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the seven background investigations Kavanaugh has undergone during his career, which included service in the George W. Bush administration before he became a judge, included interviews with 150 people.

Related: Top Republican Says FBI Found No One to Corroborate Ford

“If this is the new normal, woe be to the Senate and any nominee who would be subjected to the unacceptable character assassination that we’ve seen directed at this nominee in this case,” Cornyn said. “If that’s the norm, I don’t know who would want to serve.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) rejected a new line of attack on Kavanaugh that emerged among Democrats after the nominee answered the allegations under oath — that his anger betrayed a lack of judicial temperament.

Tillis said Kavanaugh the judge showed plenty of temperament during his original testimony.

“Last week, I saw Brett Kavanaugh [the man]. I wasn’t judging him as a judge,” the senator said. “I was judging him as a human being, who’s having his life destroyed before his very eyes, having his 13-year-old daughter heartbroken and having his wife issued death threats.”

Watch the news conference below.