GOP Sen. Jeff Flake said being confronted by two sexual assault victims in a Capitol elevator and the testimony from the accuser of Supreme Court…
GOP Sen. Jeff Flake said being confronted by two sexual assault victims in a Capitol elevator and the testimony from the accuser of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh combined to make him realize the confirmation process was “tearing the country apart.”
“I don’t think anybody expected what happened on Friday to happen. And I can’t say that I did either,” the Arizona lawmaker told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday.
“I just knew that we couldn’t move forward, that I couldn’t move forward without hitting the pause button. Because, what I was seeing, experiencing, in an elevator and watching it in committee and just thinking, this is tearing the country apart,” he continued.
Flake and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, launched a bipartisan effort last Friday to delay a confirmation vote on Kavanaugh for a week so the FBI could investigate the sexual impropriety claims made against him by Christine Blasey Ford.
Coons said his phone was “blowing up” with people relating to him their accounts of being sexually attacked as Ford testified.
“I’m hearing a very smart, anguished person who did not what to be testifying in front of us and, meanwhile, my phone is just blowing up,” he told CBS.
“It was stunning the number of people I heard from during the hearing. It was almost hard to know which to listen to more because the things coming in were so striking,” he said of Ford’s testimony.
CBS reporter Scott Pelley asked him what the messages conveyed.
“‘You’ve known me a very long time and I was raped as a child and I have never told anyone before right now, and I’m sharing it with you,’” the Delaware senator said.
Coons and Flake said Kavanaugh’s emotional but sharply partisan approach to his defense made them question his fitness for the highest court in the land.
“As I watched him, part of me thought ‘This is a man who believes that he did nothing wrong, and he is completely unjustly accused. And he’s being railroaded. And he’s furious about it,’” Coons told the CBS news show.
But he said Kavanaugh then accused the Clintons of revenge and the Democrats upset over Trump’s 2016 election win of carrying out a smear campaign.
“I was really struck that I thought his anger got the best of him. And he made a partisan argument that would’ve been best left to be made – for his advocates and defenders on the committee,” said Coons.
Flake also said Kavanaugh sounded like somebody who had been “unjustly accused” but he felt the nominee went too far.
“And I as it went on – I think his interaction with some of the members was a little too sharp. And he actually apologized at one point,” Flake said.
Kavanaugh told Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) he was sorry after they had a testy exchange about allegations that he drank to excess and would black out.
Addressing Ford’s testimony that Kavanaugh held her down on a bed, groped her and stopped her from screaming during a high school party in 1982, Flake said she was believable.
“It was just that palpable feeling that this was history and she was compelling. Just extremely compelling, and I think everyone said that on both sides,” he said.
Kavanaugh testified to the panel following Ford and denied the accusations.
