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John Wagner
National Journalist Leading the Post's New Politics Team
White House officials gathered Friday on television shows to ask the Senate to vote on Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a committee ready to consider his appointment to the Supreme Court after a dramatic hearing .
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet at 9:30 am, with Republican leaders promising to move forward with a final Senate vote early next week. During a one-day hearing on Thursday, President Trump's candidate and Christine Blasey Ford, a woman accused of sexual assault while they were teenagers, offered radically different stories.
"I think it was incredibly powerful and very clear," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary for the White House, about Kavanaugh at an appearance in "Good Morning America."
She suggested that Ford was mistaken about his attacker and stated that Kavanaugh had "been unequivocal since the first day that it did not happen by him".
When asked if Trump had the votes to confirm Kavanaugh, Sanders said, "I certainly hope so, and I certainly think so. We must move forward in this process. Judge Kavanaugh deserves a vote. "
Thursday night, three Republicans with potential votes – Jeff Flake (Arizona), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) – remained silent about their plans.
The most immediate attention will be given to Flake, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, where Republicans have a majority of 11 to 10 people. The appointment could still be considered by the entire Senate with an unfavorable recommendation from the commission.
[Kavanaugh takes partisan turn as he lashes out at ‘search and destroy’ Democrats]
The votes of some other Red Democrats also played.
Late Thursday, one of them, Sen. Doug Jones (Ala.), Said in a tweet that he would vote no if the House moves forward with Kavanaugh's consideration the day after Ford's hearing, which Jones has declared "credible and courageous". . "
With his voice trembling from time to time, Ford accurately described Thursday that Kavanaugh, drunk, hit her on a bed in a party at home, tried to take off his clothes and put his hand on his mouth to quell his screams. . She said she was "one hundred percent" certain that Kavanaugh was her abuser.
In his tweet, Jones repeated a call to the Senate to postpone the vote and hear a third person, Mark Judge, who, according to Ford, was in the room when Kavanaugh assaulted him in 1982.
"What message will we send to our daughters and our sons, not to mention the victims of sexual assault?" Said Jones in his tweet. "The message I'm going to send is: I vote no. #RightSideofHistory "
Other Democrats echoed this argument.
"Any senator who votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh after Dr. Ford's testimony says exactly what our country says: women's experiences do not matter," said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (DN.Y.) in a tweet Friday morning. "Their trauma does not matter. Their stories and voices do not matter. "
Late Thursday, the American Bar Association, which had previously labeled Kavanaugh "qualified" for the Supreme Court, called on the judicial commission to suspend the confirmation vote, saying it should not move forward until 39; an FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual assault against him may be completed.
[American Bar Association calls for FBI investigation into Kavanaugh allegations, delay in confirmation votes]
When appearing on ABC, Sanders suggested that this was not necessary, claiming that the FBI had already conducted six background checks on Kavanaugh for federal positions.
"These allegations took place long before these background checks took place," she added, adding that senators had asked Thursday questions similar to those the FBI would ask if they reopened their process.
Several of the senators who did not take a stand on Kavanaugh, including Senator Joe Manchin III (D- W.Va.), held a brief meeting in a private Capitol office after the hearing.
Asked by reporters if he believed Ford, Flake said, "I do not answer such questions.
When asked if he was ready to vote as a member of the Judiciary Committee on Friday, he said, "We'll see."
Senators Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) And Heidi Heitkamp (DN.D.), who supported previous Trump Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, as well as Manchin, also did not say how they would vote for Kavanaugh.
Coming out of the meeting with Collins, Flake and Murkowski, Manchin said that he did not know what the others would do.
"Nobody told me what decision they made," he said. "Nobody has."
[For Trump and White House, Kavanaugh hearing was a suspenseful drama in two acts]
During Thursday's hearing, Kavanaugh violently attacked the Democrats for pushing what he said were false accusations to "blow me up and shoot me down."
The 53-year-old federal judge was often in tears and stopped to drink water while he was talking about the record of charges of Ford and two other women against his wife, his children, his parents and his friends.
"It destroyed my family and my good name," he said, adding, "This two-week effort was a calculated and orchestrated political coup, fueled by apparent anger over President Trump and the 2016 elections. ".
John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Speaker of the Senate majority, told reporters Thursday night that the Judiciary Committee was going to vote on Kavanaugh's appointment as scheduled on Friday, with procedural votes on Saturday and Monday and a final vote of confirmation Tuesday.
"I'm optimistic, we'll get to the confirmation," Cornyn said.
Leaving the Capitol on Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Said, "The committee will vote in the morning and we will move on."
While Senate Republicans continued with Kavanaugh's appointment, they did not intend to hear two other accusers.
Deborah Ramirez, a classmate from Kavanaugh at Yale University, told New Yorker magazine that Kavanaugh was exposing herself to her at a party while they were both freshmen.
Julie Swetnick, a resident of Washington, said in a statement that Kavanaugh was physically abusive toward girls in high school and was present at a party in 1982 where she said she had been a victim of a "gang rape" . She is represented by Michael Avenatti, whose clients also include Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who has been paid to remain silent on an alleged ten-year affair with Trump.
Seung Min Kim, Robert Barnes and Elise Viebeck contributed to this report.
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