Sunday, September 30, 2018
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The tension in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room was almost unbearable in the hours and minutes before Sen. Jeff Flake announced that he wanted a limited FBI investigation of the sexual assault claims against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
The committee, and the Senate, seemed to be careening toward bedlam.
Republicans gave fiery speeches defending Kavanaugh. Some Democrats walked out of the room, irate that the committee was voting on Kavanaugh less than 24 hours after hearing from his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. Protesters roamed the halls outside and yelled at senators, including Flake hours earlier as he tried to get into an elevator.
As Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said, it was “not normal.”
Then Flake, R-Ariz., made his move, signaling to Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., to come talk in a small private room off the hearing room dais.
Suddenly, the mood in the room began shifting as senators huddled in a back hallway.
Ultimately, Flake, who is retiring this year, said he would not be ready to vote for Kavanaugh until the FBI conducted a background investigation into the sexual- misconduct claims. He said he would vote for Kavanaugh in committee, but wanted a week for the investigation before a floor vote.
The announcement upended his party’s plans to move quickly to confirm Kavanaugh and made clear what many had suspected: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not have the votes to proceed to Kavanaugh’s nomination over the weekend. McConnell soon called for the investigation as well, after resisting that step since the allegations became public.
Inside the anteroom, Flake had met Coons and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee. Other Republicans and Democrats came in and out. The senators crowded in the back corridor of the room as staff filled the main area.
“At one point there were 14 senators jammed into a corner,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Talking to his colleagues, Flake voiced discomfort with the accusation against Kavanaugh and said he was leaning toward asking for an FBI investigation, according to two people in the room who were not authorized to discuss the private conversation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Flake’s made-for-TV moment in the hearing room was indicative of how wrenching things had become on Capitol Hill in the 24 hours since Ford publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh, in testimony that alternated between anger and tears, denied ever doing such a thing to Ford or anyone else.
The charged emotions were mirrored by the senators in the room, including Lindsey Graham, who at one point Thursday delivered an angry diatribe against the “sham process.” Red-faced and pointing his finger as he spoke, Graham, R-S.C., nearly reached the same heights of anger Kavanaugh displayed in his more than 40-minute opening statement.