Sen. Susan Collins said Friday she would vote to confirm the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Collins made her announcement during a floor speech on the Senate as she detailed her reasoning for her support, despite the urgings of thousands of Mainers that she reject the controversial nominee.
She repeated again that she was not concerned that Kavanaugh would vote to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion under federal law.
Collins also went on to say Kavnaugh was not on trial, but even so he deserved to be treated fairly and allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh had not been corroborated.
“I do not believe these charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the court,” Collins said. “I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”
Collins’ announcement Friday means Kavanaugh, who was nominated by President Trump, will likelybecome the next associated justice on the Supreme Court. The Senate is expected to take its final confirmation vote on Saturday. In a nearly hour-long speech Collins touched on dozens of points but also spoke in strong support of the #metoo movement saying if anything positive came of the controversial nomination process for Kavanaugh it was greater awareness and concern about the problem of sexual violence in the U.S.
Collins speech came after an earlier 51-49 cloture vote, a procedural step to limit debate on Kavanaugh to 30 hours and not the final vote on his nomination, which is scheduled for Saturday.
Collins said she would disclose how she will vote on his final nomination in a floor speech at 3 p.m. Friday afternoon. Collins has consistently voted for cloture, including on measures she eventually votes against.
Maine’s senior senator is among a trio of Republicans who called for an expanded FBI investigation into Kavanaugh’s background after three different women had leveled allegations against him, including Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her during the summer of 1982.
Collins attended a briefing on the FBI report for Republican senators on Thursday, and when she emerged she called the report a “very thorough investigation.”
Others have taken issue with the thoroughness of the inquest, which was limited in time and scope by the White House and Republican leadership in the Senate.
After the cloture vote Friday morning, protesters descended on Collins’ offices in Portland and staged a sit-in, the latest in a string of efforts by Kavanaugh opponents who hope to convince her to vote no.
Collins, along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, pushed last week for the additional FBI probe of the allegations against Kavanaugh.
Flake, like Collins, voted Friday to move to the final confirmation vote. Murkowski voted no. Sen. Joe Manchin, D- West Virginia, the only Democrat who has not said how he intends to vote on Kavanaugh, also voted to advance to the final confirmation vote. Flake later said he would vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
Collins and the other Republican moderates have been under intense pressure on how they will vote. She has been meeting regularly with delegations of women who have survived sexual assaults, and her offices in Washington and Maine have been besieged by protests for weeks. Collins was also meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, according to Politico reporter Burgess Everett, who in a tweet said McConnell confirmed the luncheon. CNN was reporting McConnell said he was “optimistic” following the meeting with Collins and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas.
On Thursday, her staff met with multiple groups of Mainers throughout the day. A spokeswoman from Collins’ office said the senator spent nearly five total hours in a secure room in the U.S. Capitol reviewing the FBI’s investigation report.
Some activists have vowed to work to unseat Collins, who is up for re-election in 2020, if she votes to confirm Kavanaugh.
The 53-year-old judge made what were in effect closing arguments by acknowledging that he became “very emotional” when forcefully denying the allegations at a Judiciary Committee hearing last week.
“I said a few things I should not have said,” he wrote in an op-ed published Thursday evening. But he said he remains the same “hardworking, even-keeled” person he has always been. “Going forward, you can count on me,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
According to the Associated Press, the op-ed, as well as a late boost from President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Minnesota, appeared aimed at winning over the three wavering senators from the slim GOP majority — as well as Manchin.
Trump said the protesters’ “rage-fueled resistance is starting to backfire at a level nobody has ever seen before.” He was referring to polling that shows some improvement for Republicans heading into the midterm election.
Democrats complained that the investigation, running just six days after Trump reluctantly ordered it, was shoddy, omitting interviews with numerous potential witnesses. They accused the White House of limiting the FBI’s leeway.
Those not interviewed in the reopened background investigation included Kavanaugh himself and Ford, who ignited the furor by alleging he’d molested her in a locked room at a 1982 high school gathering.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, said while her party had agreed to a weeklong FBI probe with a finite scope, “We did not agree that the White House should tie the FBI’s hands.”
A hefty police presence added an air of anxiety on Thursday, as did thousands of anti-Kavanaugh demonstrators. U.S. Capitol Police said 302 were arrested — among them comedian Amy Schumer, a distant relative of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement late Thursday that said the FBI reached out to 11 people and interviewed 10. Six of the witnesses involved Ford’s claims, including an attorney for one of them, and four were related to Deborah Ramirez, who has asserted that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her when both were Yale freshmen. Grassley said the FBI concluded “there is no collaboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez.”
In this image from video provided by Senate TV, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine., speaks on the Senate floor about her vote on Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kananaugh, Friday, Oct. 5, 2018, in the Capitol in Washington. (Senate TV via AP)
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