Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as the world knows now, we just held a successful cloture vote on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to become the next Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am glad we were successful in closing off debate. We now know that under the Senate rules, 30 hours are available for Senators to debate, and I am sure there will be many Senators who will be coming to the floor and offering their thoughts.

To my mind, what the Senate just voted for was to end the games, the character assassination, and the intimidation tactics that unfortunately have characterized so much of this confirmation process. Our vote today was important, not only because it will allow us to move forward and conclude this confirmation process, but it was important because it showed the Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be bullied by the streams of paid protesters and name-calling by the mob. We will not be complicit in the attempts to tarnish a good man's character, destroy his career, and further delay this confirmation process--a constitutional process of advice and consent.

What has been particularly galling on the part of some of our colleagues over the last 24 hours is the fact that the FBI investigation they called for, they are virtually ignoring or, in some cases, disparaging. They called for that supplemental background investigation just last Friday. Let's all remember what our friend the senior Senator from Minnesota said last weekend. He said: Let's give this 1 week. Well, that is what we gave them. The junior Senator from Delaware asked for the same period of time at the hearing--a 1-week- long FBI investigation.

Our colleagues got what they asked for, and unfortunately, since they had already decided to vote against the nomination, they must have been somewhat disappointed that the supplemental background investigation came up with no new information, no corroboration at all.

I actually think, in some ways, our colleagues who called for a 1- week delay have done us a favor because every lead that could be followed has been followed and exhausted. As the majority leader was saying earlier, in America, under our constitutional system, where we don't presume you are guilty and require you to prove your innocence and where we believe in due process of law, I think the FBI investigation was a useful way to demonstrate to the American people that none of these allegations that had been made against Judge Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct has been proven.

It also, I think, gives us a chance to pivot from what has been a shameful and disgraceful confirmation process. If this is the new norm for the Senate--that somebody could be denied a confirmation based on an unproven allegation--I can't imagine people would be willing to subject themselves to that in the future. It would be a dark day for the Senate, for the United States, and for our system of justice that believes in a fair process and a constitutional presumption of innocence. When an allegation is made, the person making that allegation actually has to come forward with some evidence.

A number of Senators--actually, it was a bipartisan consensus--wanted the FBI to conduct a limited investigation into current, credible allegations that were pending. They wanted the FBI to interview individuals like Mark Judge, who had already offered a sworn statement under penalty of felony, and others who may have had information who were identified by Dr. Ford as being present on the day this alleged activity took place. There was no confirmation. There was no corroboration.

In fact, there was a refutation. The people she said were there and could be witnesses to what happened said: I have no knowledge of that.

Dr. Ford's best friend, Leland Kaiser, said: I don't even know Brett Kavanaugh. I never met him.

Well, we have all had an opportunity to read the confidential report. We have seen who was interviewed, what they were asked. Any doubts people may have had should now have been put to rest by what the contents reveal. These fantasies about Judge Kavanaugh being some sort of serial high school or college predator have been exposed as only that--myths not based on fact. There is no reliable evidence, whatsoever, to support any of these baseless allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.

As we know, this wasn't exactly designed to be a truth-finding process. This wasn't a search for the truth. Our colleagues across the aisle already made up their mind a long time ago, some even before Judge Kavanaugh had been nominated. This was more of, as the majority leader said earlier today, not a search for the truth but a search-and- destroy mission.

Obviously, as they continue to move the goalposts, calling for more delays, more investigations, there have been seven background investigations by the FBI of Judge Kavanaugh during his public service. The FBI talked to more than 150 witnesses. Don't you think, if there were anything to these outrageous allegations, some of that would have come up at some point in the seven FBI background investigations that have been conducted?

But our colleagues across the aisle continue to resist, putting a definitive end to this process and unfortunately caring little, if any, about the reputation of somebody who has demonstrated his outstanding qualifications and his commitment to public service. I think some of these attacks have become exhausting, politically exhausting, quite frankly.

Our colleagues don't realize what they have unleashed when Senators get coat hangers mailed to their home, paid protesters show up on their doorstep or at their office or they are accosted in the Halls of the U.S. Congress. These paid protesters reportedly, once they get arrested, actually make more money from their funders than they do if they don't get arrested. That is what has been unleashed.

Chairman Grassley called it mob rule, and that is exactly right-- where the Judiciary Committee, during the first confirmation hearing for Judge Kavanaugh, Senators said: I am breaking the rules. I am releasing committee confidential information. I know the rules prohibit me from doing that--and they don't care.

If there are no rules and there are no norms and if we don't have enough respect for this institution and the people whose lives we touch, this is what gets unleashed.

I feel bad for Dr. Ford, in particular. She wanted none of this three-ring circus. She sent a letter to the ranking member and asked that her identity remain confidential, only to find, after the first confirmation hearing, that it was leaked to the press. Then the press came to talk to her, and I guess she figured she had no other recourse but to actually tell her story to the press once her wishes were violated. She didn't consent to that. She didn't authorize the release of that confidential letter to the press, but that is what happened.

When we gave her an opportunity to have a bipartisan, professional investigation, to have staff go out to California and interview her confidentially, she said: Nobody explained to me that was an option. Well, the lawyers that the ranking member referred her to apparently didn't even tell their own client she had the opportunity to avoid this three-ring circus and the embarrassment associated with it by doing something confidentially.

That is how the Judiciary Committee ordinarily operates when allegations are made. They are investigated by committee staff or by the FBI--actually by both--but that didn't happen here until after this mob rule unleashed what we have seen here in the last few weeks.

We know, when Dr. Ford sent her letter to the ranking member, it wasn't shared with the FBI initially. It wasn't shared with Judiciary Committee investigators. It wasn't shared with the committee itself in a closed-door session, which followed the open session, where Judge Kavanaugh was asked about other personal matters that came up during the course of the background investigation. The ranking member didn't even attend that closed-door session, nor did anybody mention it to the judge when he went to talk to some 60-plus Members of the Senate one- on-one.

The ranking member, when she had that one-on-one meeting with Judge Kavanaugh, said nothing to him about the allegations. She could have asked him about the allegations, generally, without revealing the identity of Dr. Ford. We know at that point, she had already talked to Dr. Ford and recommended partisan lawyers. We know those lawyers arranged for a polygraph examination to be administered. Other preparations were being made, plans were being hatched. Our colleague from California said nothing.

I really think that Dr. Ford has been treated terribly by this ambush, by this hiding of evidence and allegations that could have been investigated and should have been investigated in a more dignified and appropriate sort of way.

Once Dr. Ford was identified, in consultation with colleagues--both Republicans and Democrats--we decided Dr. Ford should be given an opportunity to tell her side of the story. Unfortunately, we were not able to mitigate or reverse a lot of the awful circumstances under which she had found herself because of what had already been unleashed, but we did our best. We tried to do whatever we could to accommodate her. As I said, investigators offered to go to California. We brought in an experienced sexual crimes investigating attorney to ask questions in a respectful sort of way in order to illicit as much information as we possibly could get about her claim even though it was 35 years old.

Throughout the hearing, we listened to Dr. Ford, and we tried to understand what she was telling us. We took her allegations seriously and treated her in the same way we would have wanted our wives or our daughters to have been treated if they had found themselves in similar circumstances. Yet we knew, at the end of the day, there was no other witness to corroborate or to confirm what she had said, even by the ones she had identified as having been present.

This is not about believing women or believing men. It is not a zero- sum game. As the junior Senator from Nebraska said the other day, it is not about being for the #MeToo movement or against it. Who could be against it?

I hope there is some good that comes out of this disgraceful display. One of the things that might be good would be that more women would feel confident in coming forward and telling their stories to the appropriate authorities and producing the sort of information that would be necessary to make a criminal case--to investigate the case, to charge the case, to try the case, and to convict the people who commit sexual offenses. I hope there is some good that comes out of this. There is also, maybe, some legislation that we could work on together to try to heal the wounds that have been caused by this abominable process.

I have worked a lot with colleagues here to pass anti-human trafficking legislation, to end the rape kit backlog, and on other things to try to help victims. I think, maybe--just maybe--in putting our heads together, in talking with each other, and in working in good faith, we could come up with some legislative response that might find some good from this terrible situation.

The other thing about these allegations that have been made against Judge Kavanaugh is that they are completely out of character. We know he has been a circuit court judge for 12 years, authored more than 300 opinions, clerked for Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, worked at the White House as a lawyer and as Staff Secretary for the President, taught at Harvard, and had been hired by now Justice Elena Kagan to teach at Harvard, as well as having taught at Georgetown and Yale.

By all accounts--every account of anyone with personal knowledge of Judge Kavanaugh's character and treatment of women--he has treated women with respect. And it is not just conservatives who sing his praises. A liberal law school professor at Yale called Judge Kavanaugh's selection the President's finest hour, his classiest move. The same professor complimented Judge Kavanaugh's studiousness and said he has already shown flashes of greatness. Lisa Blatt, a self-described liberal feminist lawyer who has argued numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, has said Judge Kavanaugh is supremely qualified. That echoes what the American Bar Association has said--the gold standard for some of our colleagues when it comes to judicial nominees. The American Bar Association has said that Judge Kavanaugh is unanimously well qualified. That goes for his temperament as well. So I believe this nominee is about as good as it gets.

On July 10, the day after Judge Kavanaugh was nominated, I said that my Republican colleagues and I would not back down from this all-out assault on this nominee, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that this fight would devolve into the mob rule that we have seen--of Senators and staffs taunted, threatened, and of millions of dollars spent in advertising and in paying protesters to show up on Senators' front lawns, to harass them at restaurants, and to attack them in the halls of Congress. I never imagined that this would get this bad, when Senators would say ``I am breaking the rules'' and would dare anybody to do anything about it. This has turned into the kind of nasty and venomous politics that I had hoped never to experience.

This also has demonstrated the dark underbelly of Washington, DC, where power is so important to some people that they will do anything to get it. They will destroy you. They will tarnish your good name. They will condone threats on family members, including on children. They will harass you. This has really been disgusting.

I am an optimist, so I don't believe this is our fate. I don't believe we are condemned to work in a Senate and live in a country where this kind of activity is condoned or ignored. Actually, I think, by defeating Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, we would be signaling that this is somehow the new normal. We would be setting the precedent of, yes, that kind of thing works, so let's try it again. I am not saying it is just one party or the other.

The day after Judge Kavanaugh was nominated, I also said we would defend the record of Judge Kavanaugh, who is a thoughtful public servant, against deliberate attempts to denigrate him. I stand by that statement, and we have defended him. Yet we have not just defended him but have defended the Constitution, fundamental notions of fairness and fair play that are reflected in our commitment to the due process of law, and the rights of somebody who has been accused of a crime, which Judge Kavanaugh has been accused of on multiple occasions.

Even as the mud has been slung on all of us, even as insults have been hurled against this nominee and as his family has faced ridicule over atrocious exploits that never even happened, at least, I think, we can be proud of the fact we have tried to defend the Constitution, this institution of the Senate, and have pushed back with everything we have had against mob rule.

Unfortunately, those who wanted to take down this nominee viewed Judge Kavanaugh as a sacrificial lamb in some sort of vengeance campaign. Thankfully, they have now failed to stop his nomination from going forward.

This nomination is no longer simply about Judge Kavanaugh and the current vacancy on the Supreme Court; it is also about the principles we must stand up for and defend. It is about validating public service and decades of honorable conduct. It is not about forgetting all that a man has done, all that he is, and all that he has worked for at the drop of a hat based on unsubstantiated, uncorroborated allegations. It is about standing firm in the turbulent political winds. If I think about any institution in this country, I think about the Senate and how it ought to be the place in which standing firm against the turbulent political winds occurs.

We all had a chance to read the FBI report, which failed to corroborate Dr. Ford's allegations. Then we did exactly what we needed to do today, which was to vote--to stop the circus, to stop the high jinks, to stop the character assassination, and vote. I am glad our colleagues decided to close off debate now as this 30-hour postcloture period ensues. I look forward to concluding the confirmation process and confirming Judge Kavanaugh to be the next Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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