Kavanaugh vote: Trump orders FBI probe; Senate vote delayed

Kavanaugh has denied the allegations against him. In a statement Friday, he said he would “continue to cooperate” with the FBI.

“Throughout this process, I’ve been interviewed by the FBI, I’ve done a number of ‘background’ calls directly with the Senate, and yesterday, I answered questions under oath about every topic the Senators and their counsel asked me,” Kavanaugh said. “I’ve done everything they have requested and will continue to cooperate.”

Friday’s dramatic events follow wrenching, partisan hearing Thursday where Christine Blasey Ford detailed her sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh and he vehemently denied them.

Ford’s attorney welcomed the new investigation but criticized the time frame.

“A thorough FBI investigation is critical to developing all the relevant facts,” said Debra Katz. “Dr. Christine Blasey Ford welcomes this step in the process, and appreciates the efforts of Senators Flake, Murkowski, Manchin and Collins — and all other senators who have supported an FBI investigation — to ensure it is completed before the Senate votes on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination. No artificial limits as to time or scope should be imposed on this investigation.”

Kavanaugh, a Republican who played a lead role in the Ken Starr investigation of Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct and later worked in former President George W. Bush’s White House, is a DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge. He would replace the retiring Supreme Court swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, possibly cementing a conservative majority for a generation.

Flake changes his mind

On Friday morning, Flake — who had been seen as one of three swing votes in a Republican caucus that can only afford to lose one vote — announced he would support Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Then, on the way to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room, he was involved in a dramatic confrontation, when two protesters blocked Flake’s elevator. By voting to confirm Kavanaugh, “you’re telling me that my assault doesn’t matter,” one tearfully told him live on CNN, as Flake listened and nodded.

Inside the committee room an hour from Friday’s scheduled 1:30 p.m. vote, Flake tapped his friend Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, on the shoulder, and the two retreated to a private anteroom. It set off an hour of frantic behind-the-scenes negotiations, as questions about whether Flake had changed his mind hovered.

“Jeff said, ‘I’m concerned that we are tearing the country apart,'” Coons told CNN. “That the powerful testimony of Dr. Ford did not seem to be taken seriously and investigated — and that Judge Kavanaugh and his family were distraught by allegations that weren’t credible.”

When Flake emerged, he announced his position: He’d vote for Kavanaugh Friday — giving the committee an 11-10 majority to send him on to the Senate floor — but wouldn’t vote for him in the full Senate unless the FBI could investigate first.

“We ought to do what we can to make sure that we do all due diligence with a nomination this important,” he said.

There was no guarantee at the time an FBI probe would happen, however.

“This is all gentlemen’s and women’s agreement,” Grassley said after the vote to committee members.

Before Flake’s maneuver, Senate Republican leaders appeared Friday morning to have 49 solid yes votes, one shy of the 50 they need to confirm Kavanaugh — meaning they could lose one Republican and have Vice President Mike Pence break a potential tie.

Dramatic committee meeting

Shortly after the vote time was set by committee Republicans on Friday in a meeting that started at 9:30 a.m. and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley began reading a statement praising Kavanaugh, California Sen. Kamala Harris led several Democrats in walking out of the hearing room. She was joined by Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, and later, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy.

“From top to bottom this has been about bullies,” Harris told reporters outside the committee room. “Dr. Ford came in and she poured out her heart. She cooperated with the process. She gave the process dignity and respect. The least we could do is give her the dignity and respect of a process that has credibility.”

“I’m not going to participate in this charade anymore,” Hirono said.

Republicans responded angrily, saying they believed Kavanaugh’s denial of Ford’s allegation.

“I’m a single white male from South Carolina, and I’m told I should just shut up, but I will not shut up,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said Friday.

He said he feels sorry for Ford, “but I don’t believe it was Brett Kavanaugh” who assaulted her.

“Everything I know about Judge Kavanaugh screams that this didn’t happen,” Graham said.

Wrenching hearing

During an intense, day-long hearing Thursday, Ford, a California professor, testified that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while they were both teenagers in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh later offered a vociferous and emotional defense, alternately shouting and tearing up on national television.

On Thursday, Ford told the committee she is “100%” certain it was Kavanaugh who attacked her at a party when the two were teenagers in 1982.

As the nation watched, she said she “believed he was going to rape me.” She told senators it has “haunted me episodically as an adult.”

Then, Kavanaugh denied that allegation and other accusations of sexual misconduct he has faced in recent days. He blamed Democrats for what he said was a “calculated and orchestrated political hit” designed to keep him off the Supreme Court. He also refused to support a Democratic push for an FBI investigation of the allegations.

“I’ve never done this,” Kavanaugh said of Ford’s assault charge. “It’s not who I am. I am innocent.”

“The basic principles that underscore the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent on federal judicial nominees require nothing less than a careful examination of the accusations and facts by the FBI,” said Robert Carlson, president of the organization, in a Thursday night letter.

“Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote,” Carlson wrote. “Deciding to proceed without conducting additional investigation would not only have a lasting impact on the Senate’s reputation, but it will also negatively affect the great trust necessary for the American people to have in the Supreme Court.”