This afternoon at Brett Kavanaugh’s Judiciary Committee meeting, republican senators decided to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a supreme court justice until after an FBI investigation. Although this may be a small victory as it avoids a rushed decision without thorough examination of Dr. Ford’s allegations, the Republican Senate has only agreed to a one-week investigation.
What prompted the delay?The American Bar Association strongly suggested a delay on the vote. The ABA is a voluntary association of lawyers and law students not in a specific jurisdiction in the United States who, up to this point, had a good opinion of Kavanaugh and the work he has done for the U.S. In the letter to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, president of the ABA, Robert Carlson, urges the committee and senate floor to “conduct a confirmation vote on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States only after an appropriate background check into the allegations made by Professor Ford and others is completed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Another reason the Republicans agreed to the delay was Jeff Flake’s vote. He said he would vote to move Kavanaugh to the senate floor but wouldn’t vote for him in the full senate until an FBI investigation was held. Flake, one of the three republican swing votes, was seen leaving the courtroom and speaking with Delaware Senator Chris Coons. Coons later reported to CNN that Flake said 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.”
The reason for Flake’s sudden change of mind could’ve been the two female sexual assault survivors that addressed him this morning describing the larger implications of voting for Kavanaugh.
For many men and women, Kavanaugh’s election as a supreme court justice would mark a dark time in which we failed to investigate a sexual assault case to maintain and protect the status of a political leader. Senator Booker stated this morning that “this is not a partisan moment, this is a moral moment in our nation.”
Now the votes lie in the hands of two republicans, Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, and two democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp. Whether or not a one-week FBI investigation can change Flake’s original inclination to support Kavanaugh, the delay represents an attempt to search for the truth and respect Dr. Ford’s courageous testimony.