Brett Kavanaugh poised for confirmation as final vote approaches

Susan Collins: ‘I do not believe these charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the court’

Brett Kavanaugh cloture vote: as it happened

Republicans in the US Senate, with the help of a lone Democrat, have voted to advance Brett Kavanaugh to a final floor vote, propelling the embattled federal judge one step closer to the supreme court.

Faced with multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and concerns over his impartiality, Kavanaugh cleared a key procedural hurdle on Friday in a narrow 51-49 vote that fell sharply along party lines.

The outcome paved the way for a final vote , expected late on Saturday afternoon, which was poised to confirm Donald Trump’s pick for America’s highest court after a handful of key senators said they would back Kavanaugh on the Senate floor.

Two moderate Republican ‘swing vote’ senators, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine, voted to advance Kavanaugh, while Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the judge. Joe Manchin, a senator up for re-election in conservative West Virginia, was the lone Democrat to break with his party and vote yes.

Murkowski told reporters the vote on Kavanaugh was among “the most difficult evaluation[s]” of her career.

“I believe he is a good man,” she told reporters, while adding: “He’s not the right man for the court at this time.”

Flake, who last week called for the additional FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh, said he would vote to confirm the judge. Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

Collins dealt a fatal blow to Kavanaugh’s opponents by affirming her support for the judge while decrying the confirmation process as “a gutter-level political campaign”.

“I do not believe that these charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the court,” Collins said.

“Certain fundamental legal principles about due process – the presumption of innocence and fairness – do bear on my thinking, and I cannot abandon them.”

But on Saturday morning, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, said on CNN that he believed there was a pattern of behavior alleged by many witnesses about Kavanaugh’s heavy youthful drinking and his belonging to school and college clubs that were known for being derogatory towards women.

“When you see the pattern, it’s more likely than not that he did assault her [Ford] in the fashion she described,” he said.

Kavanaugh was nominated by Trump in July to replace the retiring justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who often acted as a swing vote on issues ranging from LGBT rights to abortion. If confirmed to the lifetime post, Kavanaugh would shift the court in a staunchly conservative direction for decades to come.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said in remarks on the floor ahead of Friday’s vote: “When future Americans look back at these proceedings, let them draw no lessons from the Senate’s conduct here.

“Let them look back on this chapter as the shameful culmination of the scorched-earth politics practiced by the hard right in America – people who will stop at nothing to entrench an advantage on our nation’s courts.”

The Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, dismissed the controversy over Kavanaugh’s nomination as part of an orchestrated campaign by Democrats and liberal activists.

“Before the ink had dried on Justice Kennedy’s retirement, our Democratic colleagues made it perfectly clear what this process would be about: delay, obstruct and resist,” McConnell said.

“And before the ink had dried on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, colleagues across the aisle – including Democrat members of the judiciary committee – were racing to announce they’d made up their minds and were totally opposed to his confirmation.”

The demonstrations surrounding Kavanaugh’s nomination have been unprecedented.

Thousands of protesters, many of them survivors of sexual assault, flocked to the nation’s capital in recent days with a final appeal to lawmakers to reject Kavanaugh. More than 300 were arrested on Thursday after overtaking one of the buildings that houses the offices of several US senators. On Friday, capitol police arrested more than 100 people, many for “crowding” and “obstructing” in senate offices.

Trump denounced the protesters in a Friday morning tweet claiming, without evidence, that they had been hired by liberal organizers.

“The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it!” the president wrote.

Democrats criticized the scope of the FBI report, some outspoken lawmakers condemning it as a “cover up” and a “whitewash”

Investigators did not interview Kavanaugh or Dr Christine Blasey Ford, the research psychologist who alleged he attempted to rape her when the two were teenagers in the early 1980s.

Late Friday night, Ford’s attorneys released a statement saying the FBI inquiry was “not a meaningful investigation in any sense of the word.”

Had the FBI interviewed Ford, she would have “provided corroborating evidence, including her medical records” and access to her phone, the lawyers said. There were also seven people Ford told about the assault prior to the nomination who could have testified, the statement said, adding: “Senators claiming to want a dignified debate should not repeat lies constructed by the Judiciary Committee.”

As lawmakers processed the FBI’s findings, Kavanaugh was also forced to fend off criticism of his temperament.

On the eve of Friday’s vote, the retired supreme court justice John Paul Stevens said Kavanaugh’s strikingly partisan tone while denying the allegations against him before the Senate judiciary committee last week should disqualify him.

“His performance in the hearings changed my mind,” said Stevens, a lifelong Republican. “The senators should pay attention to this.”

More than 2,400 law professors from across the country also signed a letter urging the Senate not to confirm Kavanaugh, citing his “aggressive” demeanor in the hearing.

The American Bar Association said it was re-opening its evaluation of the judge based on his performance at last week’s hearing. It had previously rated him “well-qualified”.

Kavanaugh sought to quell concerns over his judicial restraint in an op-ed published late on Thursday in the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. The judge said his angry testimony “reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused”.

“I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times,” Kavanaugh wrote. “I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.”

Democrats took to the Senate floor late into the night.

Democrats don’t seem to have the votes to keep Brett Kavanaugh from joining the Supreme Court, but that’s not stopping them from taking to the Senate floor in a parade of speeches into the early morning against the conservative jurist.

Hours before the expected roll call vote that would elevate the appeals court judge to the nation’s highest court, Democrats are making clear their strong opposition.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand asked rhetorically: “Do we, as a country, value women?”

Gillibrand said women who’ve experienced sexual trauma are “tired of the same old scenario where the men are believed and the women are not.”

Sam Levin and the Associated Press contributed reporting