Republican Senate Leaders Press to Vote on Kavanaugh This Week

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders pressed on Tuesday to wrap up the confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, seizing on word from the FBI that it would complete its investigation into allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct as early as Wednesday.

“We’ll have an FBI report this week, and we’ll have a vote this week,” an emphatic Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, told reporters after the Republicans’ weekly policy luncheon.

But McConnell’s promise was as much about bluffing as it was about confidence, giving the nomination an air of inevitability even as five undecided senators will decide Kavanaugh’s fate. Those five — Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Democrats Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — are refusing to tip their hands.

The push for a quick vote on Kavanaugh came as the Senate and the White House waited for the FBI to finish its work. President Donald Trump, who has made stocking the federal judiciary with committed conservatives like Kavanaugh a signature of his White House tenure, expressed qualified optimism Tuesday, noting that this was the seventh time the nominee had undergone a background check.

“I think that Judge Kavanaugh is doing pretty well — it seems to me — over the last 24 hours,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. “A lot is going to depend on what comes back from the FBI, in terms of their additional — No. 7 — investigation.”

The president also expressed concern for men, especially young men, who he said face a “very scary situation” when accused of sexual misconduct. “It’s a very scary time for young men in America, when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of,” he said.

Later Tuesday, while at a rally in Mississippi, Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school. He imitated one of her questioners at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and her responses about what she did not recall about the alleged attack.

“How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Trump said, as the crowd cheered.

Trump ordered the investigation into Kavanaugh on Friday, after Flake, Collins and Murkowski decided they would refuse to allow Kavanaugh’s nomination to move forward without one. He ordered that the inquiry last no more than a week, and be limited in scope.

How the bureau is conducting the investigation — and in particular, how many witnesses will be interviewed — has been the subject of fierce debate on Capitol Hill. The White House, which has control over the scope of the investigation, initially gave the FBI the names of just four witnesses. But on Monday, after a backlash from Democrats, Trump said the bureau “should interview anybody that they want within reason.”

The bureau appears to be moving quickly; on Tuesday, investigators wrapped up an interview with a crucial witness, Mark Judge, a friend and high school drinking buddy of Kavanaugh who has been identified as the only witness to the alleged sexual assault of Christine Blasey Ford. Judge’s name came up frequently last week when the judge and Blasey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The lawyer for another critical witness, Tim Gaudette, also confirmed that he had been interviewed by FBI agents. Kavanaugh’s calendar for July 1, 1982, indicates he had gone to Gaudette’s house with some of the people identified by Blasey as attending the small gathering at which she was assaulted. Democrats have asked for more details about the events of that day.

But lawyers for Blasey and another woman, Deborah Ramirez, complained independently on Tuesday that the bureau was not pursuing important leads. Blasey, who testified that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her at a house party when they were teenagers, has not been interviewed, nor have other “witnesses we have identified,” her lawyers wrote in a letter Tuesday to the FBI director and chief counsel.

Ramirez, who did not testify, has accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her during a drunken dormitory party at Yale. She spent more than two hours on Sunday with FBI investigators, her lawyer, John Clune, said on Twitter on Tuesday.

But while Clune wrote that “the agents were clearly motivated to investigate the matter in any way they were permitted,” he expressed doubts about whether they would pursue more than 20 additional witnesses that Ramirez identified. He said he and his client “have great concern that the FBI is not conducting — or not being permitted to conduct — a serious investigation.”

In addition, five former Yale classmates of Kavanaugh and Ramirez said in interviews with The New York Times that they have tried to offer information to the FBI, without success. One of them, Kerry Berchem, a classmate of Kavanaugh, has a text stream with a close Kavanaugh friend that she believes calls into question “whether Brett Kavanaugh anticipated, perhaps as early as July, the allegations made by Debbie Ramirez, which became public on Sept. 23.” Another, Kathleen Charlton, said she had information that Kavanaugh was contacting former Yale classmates before The New Yorker’s publication of an article about Ramirez to persuade them to deny it.

“Since contacting my senator’s office on Sunday morning and speaking to the FBI special agent in charge for my state — who assured me that I would hear back shortly — I have not heard anything,” Charlton wrote in an email. “I contacted the state office twice on Monday and followed up with the senator’s staff on multiple occasions. More than 72 hours have passed and the FBI has yet to take my statement.”

A third classmate, Mark Krasberg, provided a timeline indicating that he has unsuccessfully been trying to get his “important evidence regarding the Debbie Ramirez investigation” into the right hands since Sept. 28 despite “good-faith attempts.”

Once the bureau finishes its work, the results of its interviews will be shared with the Senate. Already, there is disagreement about whether and how to make them public. While McConnell said Tuesday that “only senators will be able to look at” the results, other Republicans — including Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican — said that they would like to see the results made public in some form.

“People are not going to be satisfied until some public statement about what the FBI supplemental background investigation shows,” Cornyn said. He and other Republicans expressed concerns about leaks.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters, “I’m afraid if somehow or another we don’t make it public, each side will be very selective in what they share with y’all, even though it’s supposed to be confidential.”

While the FBI is primarily examining allegations from Blasey and Ramirez, a third accuser, Julie Swetnick, has said Kavanaugh and Judge both attended parties in high school where women were gang raped. She accused the men of being severely drunk and said she saw Kavanaugh be physically aggressive toward women. Kavanaugh and Judge have forcefully denied all the allegations.

Judge’s lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, said in a statement Tuesday: “Mr. Judge completed his FBI interview. We are not commenting on the questions the FBI asked Mr. Judge.” An author, filmmaker and journalist who has written for conservative publications, Judge was the subject of numerous questions during last week’s testimony of Blasey and Kavanaugh.

Blasey said that before the attack, she was pushed into an upstairs bedroom by either Kavanaugh or Judge, and that one of them turned up the music so that others would not hear. Kavanaugh and Judge “were drunkenly laughing during the attack,” she testified.

“They seemed to be having a very good time,” she said, adding: “Mark seemed ambivalent, at times urging Brett on and at times telling him to stop. A couple of times I made eye contact with Mark and thought he might try to help me, but he did not.”

Judge has disputed her account. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said: “I do not recall the events described by Dr. Ford in her testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today. I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.”

In an earlier interview with The Times before Blasey’s name was publicly known, Judge said he never saw an encounter like the one she alleged.

“I never saw anything like that,” he said in the interview. “The way it was described is even bizarre, about turning up the music and all this other stuff. It’s no situation I recall ever being in.”