Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, would you inform me of the amount of time I have to speak.
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank the Acting President pro tempore.
Madam President, 100 days ago, Justice Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. Shortly thereafter, on July 9, the President announced the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as the newest Justice.
Judge Kavanaugh has spent 25 years of his career in public service. He spent the last 12 years on the DC Circuit--considered the second most important Federal court in the country. His record there has been extremely impressive because the Supreme Court adopted a position advanced in Judge Kavanaugh's opinions no fewer than a dozen times.
Judge Kavanaugh is also a pillar of his community and in the legal profession. He serves underprivileged communities, coaches girls' basketball, and is a lector at his church. He has shown a deep commitment to preparing young lawyers for their careers. He has been a law professor at three prestigious law schools and a mentor to dozens of judicial law clerks.
This should have been a respectable and dignified confirmation process. In a previous era, this highly qualified nominee would have received unanimous support in the Senate. Before leftwing, outside groups and Democratic leaders had him in their sights, Judge Kavanaugh possessed an impeccable reputation and was held in high esteem by the bench and the bar alike. Even the American Bar Association, which the Democrats say is their gold standard for judges, gave him its unanimous ``well-qualified'' rating.
What leftwing groups and their Democratic allies have done to Judge Kavanaugh is nothing short of monstrous. I saw what they did to Robert Bork. I saw what they did to Clarence Thomas. That was nothing compared to what we have witnessed in the last 3 months. The conduct of leftwing, dark money groups and their allies in this body has shamed us all.
The fix was in from the very beginning. Before the ink was even dry on the nomination, the minority leader announced he would oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination with everything he had. Even before he knew the President's nominee, the minority leader said he was opposed to all 25 well-qualified potential nominees listed by this President. One member of my committee said those who would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh would be ``complicit in evil.'' Another member of the committee revealed the endgame when she suggested that Senate Democrats could hold the vacancy open for 2 years if they defeated Judge Kavanaugh and took control of the Senate in these midterm elections.
I oversaw the most transparent confirmation process in Senate history based on the fact of the more than 500,000 pages of judicial writings, publications, and documents from Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch service. This is on top of the 307 judicial opinions he authored. Despite the Democrats' efforts to bury the committee in even more paperwork, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a timely, 4-day hearing on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination last month. Judge Kavanaugh testified for more than 32 hours over the course of 3 days. Judge Kavanaugh showed the Nation exactly why he deserves to be on the Supreme Court-- because of his qualifications.
Judge Kavanaugh's antagonizers couldn't land a punch on him during his 3 days of testimony. Even when they made false or misleading arguments, they couldn't touch him. Some of my colleagues accused Judge Kavanaugh of committing perjury. For that false claim, the Washington Post Fact Checker awarded my colleague three Pinocchios. Another colleague claimed Judge Kavanaugh described contraceptives as ``abortion-inducing'' drugs. The video my colleague shared on the internet was doctored to omit the fact that Judge Kavanaugh was describing the plaintiffs' claims in a case that he had decided and not his own views. My colleague was awarded four Pinocchios. Those, of course, are the most Pinocchios you can get.
Yet they still had one big card to play, which they had kept way up their sleeves for a month--actually, for 45 days, I think. In July, the ranking member received a letter from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, alleging that Judge Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school 36 years ago. Instead of referring Dr. Ford to the FBI or sharing these allegations with her colleagues--either of which would have respected and preserved Dr. Ford's confidentiality and is what Dr. Ford requested--the ranking member referred Dr. Ford to Democratic-activist attorneys who were closely tied to the Clintons. The ranking member shamefully sat on these allegations for nearly 7 weeks, only to reveal them at the eleventh hour, when it appeared that Judge Kavanaugh was headed toward confirmation because he was so qualified.
The ranking member had numerous opportunities to raise these allegations with Judge Kavanaugh personally. I will give you six examples.
She could have discussed them with Judge Kavanaugh during their private meeting on August 20--a meeting which took place after her staff had sent Dr. Ford to Democratic lawyers--or shared them with 64 of her Senate colleagues who had also met with him individually; the ranking member's staff could have raised them with Judge Kavanaugh during a background investigation followup call in late August; Senators could have asked Judge Kavanaugh about the allegations during his 32 hours of testimony over the course of 3 days; Judiciary Committee members could have asked Judge Kavanaugh about this in the closed session of the hearing, which the ranking member didn't attend. The closed session is the appropriate place to bring up issues about which confidentiality is supposed to be respected, and there were no questions about these allegations among the 1,300 written questions that had been sent to Judge Kavanaugh after the hearing. This amounts to more written questions being submitted to this nominee after a hearing than to all Supreme Court nominees combined.
Keeping the July 30 letter secret deprived Senators of having all the facts they needed to have about this nomination.
It was not until September 13--July 30 to September 13, nearly 7 weeks after the ranking member received these allegations and on the eve of the confirmation vote--that the ranking member referred them to the FBI. Then, somehow, they were leaked to the press. It was not until those news reports on September 16 that I even learned of Dr. Ford's identity. This is an outrage. The political motives behind the Democrats' actions should be obvious to everyone.
Dr. Ford requested the opportunity to tell her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee. After a lot of foot-dragging by Dr. Ford's attorneys, they finally agreed to a public hearing. As promised, I provided a safe, comfortable, and dignified forum for Dr. Ford as well as for Judge Kavanaugh. Dr. Ford was sincere in her testimony, as was Judge Kavanaugh, who emphatically denied the allegations.
It is true that confirmation hearings aren't a trial, but trials have rules based on commonsense notions of fairness and due process, not the other way around. It is a fundamental aspect of fairness and a fundamental aspect of due process that the accuser have the burden of proving allegations. Judge Kavanaugh was publicly accused of a crime, and his reputation and livelihood were at stake. So it was only fair that his accuser have the burden of proof. The consensus is, the burden was not met.
Ultimately, the existing evidence, including the statements of the three alleged eyewitnesses named by Dr. Ford, refuted Dr. Ford's version of the facts. Our investigative nominations counsel, Rachel Mitchell, who has nearly 25 years of experience in advocating for sexual assault victims and in investigating sex crimes, concluded there was a lack of specificity and simply too many inconsistencies in Dr. Ford's allegations to establish that Judge Kavanaugh committed sexual assault even under the lowest standard of proof.
She concluded:
A ``he said, she said'' case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.
We have thoroughly investigated Judge Kavanaugh's background.
In addition to the prior six FBI full-field background investigations with the interviews of nearly 150 people who have known Judge Kavanaugh his entire life, the committee also separately and thoroughly investigated every credible allegation we received. Our more than 20 committee staff members have worked night and day over the last many weeks in tracking down virtually all leads, and at the request of undecided members, the FBI reopened Judge Kavanaugh's background investigation for another week.
The FBI interviewed 10 more people related to the latest credible sexual assault allegations, and the FBI confirmed what the Senate investigators already concluded, which is this: There is nothing in the supplemental FBI background investigation report that we didn't already know.
These uncorroborated accusations have been unequivocally and repeatedly rejected by Judge Kavanaugh, and neither the Judiciary Committee nor the FBI could locate any third parties who can attest to any of the allegations. There also is no contemporaneous evidence.
This investigation found no hint of misconduct, and the same is true of six prior FBI investigations conducted during Judge Kavanaugh's 25 years of public service. Nothing an investigator, including career FBI special agents, does could ever be good enough to satisfy the Democratic leadership in Washington, who staked out opposition to Judge Kavanaugh before he was even nominated.
There is simply no reason, then, to deny Judge Kavanaugh a seat on the Supreme Court on the basis of the evidence presented to us. The Democratic strategy used against Judge Kavanaugh has made one thing clear: They will never be satisfied, no matter how fair and thorough the process is.
Thirty-one years after the Senate Democrats' treatment of Robert Bork, their playbook remains the same. For the leftwing, advice and consent has become search and destroy, a demolition derby.
I am pleased to support Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation. I am sorry for what the whole family has gone through the last several weeks. We should all admire Kavanaugh's willingness to serve his country, despite the way he has been treated. It would be a travesty if the Senate did not confirm the most qualified nominee in our Nation's history.
The multitude of allegations against him have proved to be false. They have also proved that no discussion of his qualifications have shown he wasn't qualified. We had a campaign of distraction from his outstanding qualifications, a campaign of destruction of this fine individual.
What we have learned is the resistance that has existed since the day after the November 2016 election is centered right here on Capitol Hill. They have encouraged mob rule.
When you hear about things like ``Get in their face; bother people at every restaurant where you can find a Cabinet Member''--these are coming from public servants who ought to set an example of civility in American society, and it has been made worse by what has happened to Judge Kavanaugh.
I hope we can say no to mob rule by voting to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.
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