Collins, Manchin say 'aye,' appearing to cement Kavanaugh confirmation

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va on Friday said they intend to vote in favor of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation -- two crucial votes that appear to secure Kavanaugh's confirmation to the nation's highest court.
Moments after Collins spoke on the Senate floor announcing her intention to vote for the nominee, Manchin said in a statement he would also vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Manchin said while he had "reservations" due to sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh and his temperament, he said "I believe he will rule in a manner that is consistent with our Constitution."

Collins said the confirmation had resembled a "caricature of a gutter-level political campaign" and criticized Democrats for announcing their opposition to Kavanaugh before his name was even announced. She also criticized outside groups for distorting Kavanaugh's record and "over-the-top rhetoric."
As she began her speech, she was interrupted by protesters urging her to vote "no." The Senate was flooded by protesters in the days leading up to the vote, with activists hounding Republicans and urging them to vote against Kavanaugh's confirmation, citing decades-old sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. Protesters also yelled "shame" at Manchin after his statement.

Collins dismissed claims that Kavanaugh would be a partisan judge, noted he had ruled in favor of parts of ObamaCare and ruled against a Bush-era terror conviction. She also said she was assured that Kavanaugh would not overturn Roe v Wade -- the 1973 decision that found a constitutional right to abortion. She also rejected concerns by Democrats about his temperament and that he was out of the judicial mainstream.
Collins, who told Fox News that she made her decision on Thursday evening, officially made her announcement on the floor of the Senate Friday, hours after the chamber voted 51-49 to advance Kavanaugh's nomination to a final vote on Saturday evening. Collins was one of four key undecided senators who were closely watched for how they would vote. Collins -- along with Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Manchin voted to invoke cloture on the nomination earlier Friday. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted "no."
Flake had suggested he would vote "yes" for Kavanaugh "unless something big changes."
Meanwhile, a source familiar with the confirmation process told Fox News that Manchin called to notify the White House that he was a "yes" for Kavanaugh. But White House officials learned of Collins' decision to support Kavanaugh in real time.
With a 51-49 majority in the Senate, Republicans expect passage by a razor-thin margin. And so every vote has been a subject of intense speculation and scrutiny.
At this point, White House officials are assuming that Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, will remain a "no" during Saturday's confirmation vote. She confirmed that she would not support the nomination in remarks on Capitol Hill Friday evening, saying that, invoking her conscience, "I could not conclude that he is the right person for the court at this time."
She won't vote a straight "no," though.  She said that due to the necessary absence of Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., they will have a “Pair Between Senators.” This collegial procedure will take place during the Saturday vote and will ensure the vote margin is the same, even with Daines walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Murkowski will ask to be recorded as ‘present’ (though on record as a ‘no’ vote) while Daines is on record as supporting the nomination, but necessarily absent.
Murkowski said it's her hope "that this reminds us we can take very small steps to be gracious with one another."
Kavanaugh’s nomination was embroiled in a deeply divisive controversy that gripped the nation after multiple women made sexual assault allegations originating from his time in high school and college. The most prominent allegation was from California professor Christine Blasey Ford, who said that Kavanaugh assaulted her at a high school party. That allegation resulted in a high-stakes Senate Judiciary hearing last week where both Ford and Kavanaugh testified.
Democrats said the allegations were credible and deserved a full investigation, while Republicans accused Democrats of using uncorroborated allegations to scuttle or delay the nomination -- leading to a stream of angry flashpoints between lawmakers. The accusations eventually led to President Trump ordering an FBI investigation. Republicans who had seen the FBI’s report said the FBI had produced no credible corroboration of the allegations.
On those accusations, Collins said the Senate would be "ill-served in the long-term if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, as tempting as it may be." She pointed to what she saw as inconsistencies and lack of corroboration in Ford's story and said they fail to meet the "more likely than not" standard. She also said that those trying to defeat Kavanaugh's nomination "cared little if at all" about Ford's well being.
Collins also made reference to allegations by Julie Swetnick that Kavanaugh drugged girls and was present during gang rapes.
"This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others," she said. "That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court process is a stark reminder of why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American conscience."
Protesters clashed with Republican lawmakers in an effort to sway their votes, and initially appeared to have some success. Flake demanded the limited FBI investigation last week after being cornered in an elevator by screaming protesters moments before a Senate Judiciary Committee vote to recommend Kavanaugh’s nomination. Republicans and conservatives had pushed back, including putting out ads that suggested the fight over accusations against Kavanaugh had implications for men across America.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said early Friday that the vote was "a pivotal day for us here in the Senate."
"The ideals of justice that have served our nation for so long are on display," he said, calling the last two weeks a "disgraceful spectacle."
But Democrats had pointed to not only the sexual assault allegations, which they described but also questions about Kavanaugh’s temperament during the hearing last week and whether he had lied about his drinking during high school and college, and what certain references in his high school yearbook meant. They also sought to paint him as a justice that would swing the court deeply to the right.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, accused Kavanaugh of being evasive in his answers during his confirmation hearings on key topics. He said his views are “deeply at odds with the progress America has made in the last century of jurisprudence and at odds with what most Americans believe.”
Fox News' Alex Pappas, Chad Pergram, Jason Donner, John Roberts and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

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Partisans predictably praise, pummel FBI's Kavanaugh probe

Nothing was more predictable than Republican senators embracing the FBI investigation of Brett Kavanaugh and Democrats denouncing it.
Hours after the findings were delivered to all 100 senators, Mitch McConnell made clear that he’s ready to push through the Supreme Court nominee based on a report that vindicates Kavanaugh, and Chuck Schumer made just as clear that he’ll keep attacking the report as woefully inadequate.
And President Trump naturally welcomed the findings of the investigation he ordered under pressure from Jeff Flake and other swing lawmakers, tweeting of his nominee that "this great life cannot be ruined by mean & despicable Democrats and totally uncorroborated allegations!"
The less-than-a-week probe was always a Hail Mary pass for Kavanaugh opponents, unlikely to break new ground in what was a limited background check, not a criminal investigation.
And with uncommitted senators such as Flake and Susan Collins expressing satisfaction with the report, Kavanaugh is virtually certain to join the high court.
Stripping away the rhetoric, the GOP hoped an FBI inquiry would provide political cover for voting to confirm Kavanaugh despite the sexual assault allegations by Christine Blasey Ford and others. And the Democrats hoped that the inquiry would turn up new evidence that would require further investigation or provide enough of a delay that new accusations might surface, tipping the scales against Kavanaugh.
FBI agents spoke to nine of the 10 witnesses they tried to reach. It's hard to fathom, at least as a matter of optics, why those witnesses didn't include Ford and Kavanaugh, even though they'd already testified. This gave the minority party an opportunity to dismiss the investigation and Ford's lawyers a chance to blast the bureau for rejecting their plea to have her questioned about what she says happened when she was 15.
Not even Democrats claimed the probe had unearthed new evidence of misconduct. Instead, they said the bureau's attempt was so limited that nothing of importance could be turned up. But the Republicans are exercised too, with Chuck Grassley lecturing reporters on their bias and Orrin Hatch decrying the process that Kavanaugh was put through.
The FBI did interview the second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who told the New Yorker that despite her memory gaps, she concluded that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party while they were students at Yale. Her lawyers ripped the bureau for not interviewing 20-plus witnesses about her allegations.
As for other stories that have burst into the news this past week, the Washington Post reported that the White House had restricted the FBI from examining his drinking habits or any discrepancy between his testimony and past alcohol consumption.
The likelihood that this limited investigation was going to derail the nomination was always extremely small. The question now is whether the lingering impact of this raw and ugly battle will linger over not just the midterms but the country’s cultural conversation.

Facebook executive's Kavanaugh support triggers backlash for Zuckerberg

Facebook's vice president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan, attended the Kavanaugh hearing last week. (Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images, File)

Hundreds of Facebook employees have criticized a top executive after he attended Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's hearing last week in a show of support for the federal judge, The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy, is a longtime friend of Kavanaugh, whose nomination has been threatened by sexual misconduct allegations dating from his time in high school and college in the early 1980s. Kaplan attended the dramatic Sept. 27 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which lawmakers heard testimony from Kavanaugh and one of his accusers, Christine Blasey Ford.
The Journal reported that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about Kaplan's attendance at a weekly Q-and-A session with employees last Friday. Zuckerberg said that he wouldn't have made the same decision as Kaplan, but that the executive had not violated any company policies.

Joel Kaplan, third from left, listens to Brett Kavanaugh testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27. (REUTERS/Jim Bourg)

However, Zuckerberg's response has failed to quell the furor, with employees taking to an internal discussion thread to criticized Kaplan's decision. That same Friday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in an internal discussion board post that she had talked to the exec "about why I think it was a mistake for him to attend, given his role in the company.
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"We support people’s right to do what they want in their personal time but this was by no means a straightforward case," Sandberg added.
The Journal reported that Zuckerberg and other executives are planning a company town hall on Friday to address the matter, with Kaplan calling into the forum from Washington, D.C.
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Kaplan, who, like Kavanaugh, is a former official in the George W. Bush administration, apologized in an internal forum for what The Journal described as "surprising employees by his appearance," and said he did not expect his decision to be controversial.
"Sexual assault is an issue society has turned a blind eye to for far too long — compounding every victim’s pain," Facebook spokeswoman Roberta Thomson told the paper. "Our leadership team recognizes that they’ve made mistakes handling the events of the last week and we’re grateful for all the feedback from our employees."

As Kavanaugh vote looms, GOP Sen. Daines says he's going to daughter's wedding

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont. told Fox News exclusively on Thursday that although he will walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding in Montana on Saturday, his plans won't affect Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation vote scheduled for the same day in Washington.
Speaking to host Shannon Bream on "Fox News @ Night," Daines said he personally called Kavanaugh Thursday evening and told him, "I'm going to be there to vote for you as needed."
He continued:  "I've got a wedding on Saturday. My goal this weekend is to walk my daughter down the aisle, and to see a new U.S. Supreme Court Justice put on the court."
Because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., started a procedural clock Thursday evening, Republicans cannot technically delay the final confirmation vote on Saturday unless they secure the consent of all 100 senators. (50 affirmative votes are needed for Friday morning's procedural vote to invoke cloture, meaning to formally end debate and move forward to Saturday's final vote.)
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The GOP could, however, hold the session open for several hours, allowing Daines to vote late Saturday or even Sunday if needed. "Votes are held open all the time," Daines said.
He added: "The next most important vote is [Friday] at 10:30 [a.m. ET]. ... We're going to find out a lot tomorrow. And we've got a plan ready to go."

"My goal this weekend is to walk my daughter down the aisle, and to see a new U.S. Supreme Court Justice."
— Steve Daines, R-Mont.

Republicans command a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate, and several key swing-vote senators haven't yet announced how they will vote on Kavanaugh.
But Daines said Thursday he hoped they would vote to confirm, adding that he spent three hours reviewing the FBI's confidential background check into Kavanaugh earlier in the day, and that "there's absolutely zero corroborating evidence to support" the sexual misconduct allegations against the nominee.
Daines’ office told Fox News that the timing of the FBI’s recent probe into sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh was fluid, meaning it was not known that there would be a conflict with his wedding until recently.
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Daines will be in attendance Friday morning when the Senate takes a vote to end debate on Kavanaugh's nomination.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Judiciary Committee releases executive summary of supplemental FBI report on Kavanaugh

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans released an executive summary of the FBI's confidential supplemental background investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh late Thursday, which key swing-vote senators vowed they would continue to review Friday ahead of a major vote on his confirmation.
According to the summary of the report, FBI agents interviewed 10 people and reached out to 11. They focused exclusively on witnesses with potential first-hand knowledge of alleged sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh.
"The FBI provided to the Senate 12 detailed FD-302 reports summarizing their interviews with the witnesses as well as supporting materials cited by the witnesses during their interviews," the summary reads. Only senators and top aides are being allowed to review the full report in a secure facility on Capitol Hill.
Notably absent from the witness list were any individuals directly related to the allegations of Julie Swetnick, who claimed in a sworn statement that she had witnessed Kavanaugh participating in systemic gang rapes decades ago.
Swetnick's credibility has taken a beating in recent days, with one ex-boyfriend telling Fox News she "exaggerated everything" and had threatened to kill his unborn child. Another ex-boyfriend similarly cast doubt on her credibility, as reports surfaced that she had previously been sued for allegedly concocting false sexual harassment claims. Swetnick is represented by anti-Trump lawyer Michael Avenatti.
Among those questioned were Mark Judge, PJ Smyth, and Leland Keyser, the three individuals Christine Blasey Ford claimed were present when Kavanaugh allegedly threw her on a bed and sexually assaulted her sometime in the 1980s (Ford has variously claimed the episode occurred in the mid-1980s and early 1980s, before testifying that it occurred in 1982).

"There is no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez."
— Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans

All three of those individuals had already provided statements to the Judiciary Committee under penalty of felony denying any knowledge of the alleged assault. Keyser, Ford's lifelong best friend, denied ever knowing Kavanaugh. When questioned about Keyser's statement at last Thursday's hearing, Ford suggested Keyser was having serious medical issues and had apologized for her denial.
Judge was also questioned "extensively" about other allegations besides Ford's, according to the Judiciary Committee. Democrats had called for Senate Republicans to subpoena Judge, a longtime friend of Kavanaugh's, so that they could question him about the nominee's drinking habits and high school yearbook references.
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Additionally, the FBI interviewed two individuals named in Kavanaugh's July 1, 1982 calendar entry, which some observers said could have described the gathering where Ford was purportedly attacked. Those individuals were his longtime friend Christopher Garrett and Timothy Gaudette, whose house Kavanaugh visited for beers on July 1, according to his calendar. An attorney for one of those witnesses was also interviewed.
Finally, the FBI interviewed Deborah Ramirez, the woman who claimed in an explosive New Yorker piece that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a Yale party. The FBI also interviewed two alleged eyewitnesses identified by Ramirez, and tried to interview a third, but that individual refused to cooperate. Agents also interviewed one of Ramirez's close friends from college.
"The Supplemental Background Investigation confirms what the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded after its investigation: there is no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez," the Judiciary Committee Republicans wrote.
Ramirez had previously acknowledged to The New Yorker that, as recently as last month, she was not sure Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself to her. She then changed her mind after speaking to an attorney for less than a week, according ot the magazine. Kavanaugh testified last Thursday that he had heard Ramirez was asking former classmates at Yale about the alleged episode during the summer, apparently trying to "refresh" their memories in a manner he implied was inappropriate.
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One of Ramirez's lawyers complained on Twitter this week that the FBI did not appear to be conducting a "serious" investigation because, he claimed, the agency failed to reach out to some of the dozens of witnesses he had suggested.
Nevertheless, for several hours on Thursday, senators from both parties filed in and out of the Capitol Building's Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), where they pored over the FBI's full report in a private, secured setting. Senators were not allowed to take the report out of the SCIF.
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, considered a key potential swing vote on Kavanaugh, said Thursday that the bureau’s supplemental background probe “appears to be a very thorough investigation.” On Thursday afternoon, however, she remained in the SCIF for more than an hour and a half, causing some consternation among Republicans.
“All of that time, she still doesn’t know?” one source asked Fox News.
And Arizona Republican Sen. Flake, who originally requested the FBI re-open its investigation into the sexual assault claims leveled against Kavanaugh by Ford, agreed with Collins' assessment.
“No new corroborative information came out of it,” Flake said. “Thus far, we’ve seen no new credible corroboration — no new corroboration at all.”
However, Flake continued to keep the public guessing, returning to view the report again and saying he has "more reading" to do. He pulled a surprise last week when he publicly backed Kavanaugh, then demanded the FBI probe before a final vote.
Top Democrats, though, minced no words about the FBI's report, saying the bureau's inquiry should not have been restricted to one week. President Trump has said the FBI had the authority to interview "whoever" they wanted, but Democrats also alleged that the administration had meddled in the investigation.
"Well, that report -- if that's an investigation, it's a bull---- investigation," Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told a man as he walked through the Capitol complex on Thursday. "The reality is, that was not a full and thorough investigation."
The investigation's one-week time limit, Flake and other Republicans said, was necessary to avoid bogging down Kavanaugh's nomination with a never-ending probe into various uncorroborated, lurid accusations, which all related to alleged events more than three decades ago. President Trump has said that the FBI had the authority to interview "whoever" it wanted, but he openly cast doubt this week on the legitimacy of many claims against Kavanaugh.
Ford's attorneys also sharply criticized the FBI for not reaching out to interview their client, who testified at length during Thursday's hearing. They told Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that they would only turn over Ford's therapist notes if the FBI interviewed their client.
Ford has extensively cited her 2012 therapy notes as a kind of corroboration for her claims but has not provided them -- even in part -- to investigators. (The Washington Post said Ford had shared a "portion" of her notes with their reporters, but under oath on Thursday, Ford said she could not recall whether she had actually done so, or merely described the notes).
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Late Thursday, Grassley ripped into Ford's attorneys for their request, and suggested in an exasperated letter that they simply wanted to stall Kavanaugh's confirmation at any cost.
"Your response on behalf of your client is a non-sequitur," Grassley wrote in the letter. "It’s not even clear to me what purpose turning over these materials to the FBI would accomplish. The FBI would simply turn over that evidence to the Senate. That is precisely the outcome I seek with this request."
Furthermore, Grassley added, "The U.S. Senate doesn’t control the FBI. If you have an objection to how the FBI conducts its investigations, take it up with [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray."
Grassley concluded by implying that Ford's attorneys weren't disclosing her therapist notes because they did not, in fact, back up her claims.
A final vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation is expected Saturday. A key procedural vote to end debate on his nomination is set for Friday morning.

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California efforts vs. Trump costing state taxpayers millions: report

By Bradford Betz | Fox News

3-4 minutes

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The ongoing war between California state officials and the Trump administration is costing the state's taxpayers millions of dollars, data from the California Department of Justice indicates.
Since President Trump took office in January 2017, California has filed 44 lawsuits against the administration, while the federal government has filed three against California. For the 2017-18 fiscal year, the state's tab for legal fees has been more than $9 million – up from nearly $3 million the previous year, the Sacramento Bee reported.
State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, has downplayed the costs involved in the California vs. Trump war, pointing out that it amounts to less than 1 percent of the state Department of Justice’s $894 million annual budget. He said the costs were a small price to pay to fight federal overreach.
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“When you put into perspective that less than one percent of our budget is going to defend our people, our values and our resources, I think most people would say ‘Don’t stop,’” Becerra said. “[A]ny one of those items … would dwarf what we’d have to spend for all the litigation efforts that we’ve undertaken to defend the state of California against the federal government’s intrusion.

“Just because California and its Democratic leaders disagree with something the president or his administration does, that doesn’t mean the courts are the place to have that disagreement.”
— Harmeet Dhillon, Republican National Committee

By not fighting back against Trump, Becerra said, California risks losing billions per year in externalities. But Republicans have accused Democratic leaders of wasting taxpayer money.
“Just because California and its Democratic leaders disagree with something the president or his administration does, that doesn’t mean the courts are the place to have that disagreement,” said Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney for the Republican National Committee. “Xavier Becerra is misusing the courts to score political points.”
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said the ongoing lawsuits amount to “little more than political posturing by California politicians.”
“Compared to the $120 billion state general fund, it may not seem like much, but it’s symbolic of an attitude of waste and foolish pursuits by our state government officials,” Coupal said.
Of the 44 lawsuits filed in the last 21 months against the Trump administration, the majority are still pending, the Bee reported.