KAVANAUGH HEARING | GOP senators hit Trump for mocking accuser

1:40 p.m.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders is defending President Donald Trump’s decision to mock the woman who has claimed she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Sanders told reporters Wednesday at a rare White House briefing that: “The president was stating the facts” at a Mississippi rally Tuesday night.

Sanders is also blasting Democrats, accusing them of launching a “full scale assault on” Kavanaugh’s integrity. She’s calling it “a coordinated smear campaign.”

Three wavering Republican senators have lambasted Trump for going after Christine Blasey Ford. Just last week, Trump had described her testimony as “very credible.”

The FBI is conducting a revived background check into Ford’s accusation, which Kavanaugh denies.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the chamber will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination later this week.

12:42 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three wavering Republican senators lambasted President Donald Trump on Wednesday for mocking a woman who has claimed Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the 1980s, underscoring the risks of assailing Kavanaugh’s three accusers as Senate support teeters for the Supreme Court nominee.

The blowback to Trump’s scoffing at Christine Blasey Ford came as lawmakers awaited results of a revived FBI background check, expected imminently, on accusations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh in high school and college. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said the chamber will vote on Kavanaugh later this week, and the conservative jurist’s fate is in the hands of a handful of undecided GOP and Democratic senators.

At a political rally in Mississippi Tuesday night, Trump mimicked Ford’s responses at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week at which she recounted Kavanaugh’s alleged attack on her when both were in high school. The audience laughed as Trump, at times inaccurately, recounted what he described as holes in her testimony.

“I had one beer — that’s the only thing I remember,” Trump said.

On NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said that ridiculing “something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right.” Flake added, “I wish he hadn’t done it. It’s kind of appalling.”

Separately, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters, “The president’s comments were just plain wrong,” and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said they were “wholly inappropriate and in my view unacceptable.”

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a tweet that people can “decide who to believe” but everyone should stop the “personal attacks” against Ford, Kavanaugh and their families.

Trump’s comments about Ford reflected a growing frustration among some in the White House, and by the president, that her story has not received the same level of scrutiny as Kavanaugh’s, said a person close to the process who was not authorized to speak publicly.

As he flew aboard Air Force One to the Mississippi rally, Trump was also enraged by stories in The New York Times about Kavanaugh’s high school and college years and alleging tax avoidance efforts by the president and his family, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday echoed the president’s newly aggressive approach. She said Ford has “been treated like a Faberge egg by all of us, beginning with me and the president.” She said Trump was merely “pointing out factual inconsistencies.”

“Have a vote on the man,” Conway said of Kavanaugh. “Vote him up or down.”

10:22 a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the “far left” is trying to “bully” Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with a “mudslide” of sexual misconduct allegations.

McConnell in a floor speech Wednesday says the Senate will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination this week. He says senators will not be intimidated by the protesters opposed to Kavanaugh who have been confronting them in the hallways of the Capitol, at airports and at their homes.

McConnell says “there’s no chance in the world they’re going to scare us out of doing our duty.”

The FBI is nearing completion of its expanded investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanagh. Once the Senate receives the FBI’s report, Republicans are expected to move toward a vote.

A handful of senators are undecided on Kavanaugh. Their votes will likely decide whether he is confirmed.

10: 05 a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has finished an interview with Chris Garrett, a high school friend of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Garrett’s lawyer, William Sullivan, says Garrett has voluntarily cooperated with the FBI’s reopened background check of Kavanaugh and has finished his interview.

He declined to comment further.

Garrett is at least the fifth person known to have been interviewed by the FBI since last Friday, when the White House directed the FBI to look into allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to Kavanaugh’s high school and college years.

Other people questioned include people who were said to have been present at a high school party where California professor Christine Blasey Ford says she was assaulted as a teenager in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

Meanwhile, a second Republican senator wavering on Kavanaugh is criticizing President Donald Trump’s mocking of a woman who’s accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually attacking her in the 1980s.

Susan Collins of Maine tells reporters that Trump’s remarks about Ford were “just plain wrong.”

The president, at a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, mimicked Ford’s responses to questions at a Senate hearing last week when she described her allegations about Kavanaugh.

Another undecided GOP senator also has criticized Trump. Arizona’s Jeff Flake tells NBC’s “Today” show that Trump’s remarks were “kind of appalling.”

GOP leaders say an FBI report on Kavanaugh will be completed soon. They plan a Senate vote on him later this week. It is unclear whether he will be confirmed.