Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said she was leaning toward voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh until he engaged in a \u201cjaw-dropping\u201d exchange\u2026<\/b>
\nDemocratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said she was leaning toward voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh until he engaged in a \u201cjaw-dropping\u201d exchange with a senator on the Judiciary Committee over his drinking behavior while in high school.
\u201cWhen this nominee was announced I had a completely open mind. Had a chance to meet him. In fact I liked him,\u201d Heitkamp said on CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d in an interview that aired Sunday. \u201cI had a chance to begin to review his judicial record and there was really nothing at that point that I believe was disqualifying for him to serve.\u201d
Heitkamp, who\u2019s running for reelection in North Dakota where President Trump trounced Hillary Clinton by 36 percentage points, said she could understand why Kavanaugh would be angry about the sexual misconduct allegations.
\u201cBut as the questioning went on, and really at the point that he had his interaction with Amy Klobuchar, it was jaw-dropping for me,\u201d she said.
During the Judiciary Committee hearing, Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, asked Kavanaugh about the allegations that he drank until he blacked out in high school.
\u201cI don\u2019t know. Have you?\u201d he asked Klobuchar.
That was a turning point for Heitkamp .
\u201cI have a responsibility not only to find somebody academically and intellectually qualified, but qualified by temperament, impartiality and by \u2026 empathy,\u201d she said.
But a Republican colleague, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, voted to confirm Kavanaugh and made a 40-minute speech on the Senate floor on Saturday explaining why.
She told CBS that while Christine Blasey Ford, who said a drunken Kavanaugh groped her during a high school party in 1982, believed she was sexually assaulted \u2014 it wasn\u2019t by Kavanaugh.
\u201cShe was clearly terrified, traumatized and I believed that a sexual assault had happened to her What I think she is mistaken about is who the perpetrator was,\u201d Collins said. \u201cI do not believe her assailant was Brett Kavanaugh.\u201d
Both read the report written by the FBI after conducting an additional background investigation into the nominee.
\u201cI did. But I didn\u2019t find the information there particularly enlightening,\u201d Heitkamp said.
Collins said nobody interviewed corroborated Ford\u2019s claims.
\u201cEven after the FBI has interviewed everyone whom Dr. Ford has named as present that horrible night that she remembers, every single one of them including her best friend has no recollection of anything like this,\u201d she said.
Heitkamp, who is trailing her challenger in the polls by double-digits, was asked if a vote for Kavanaugh would have been beneficial to her political campaign.
\u201cBecause this isn\u2019t about politics. This is about a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not gonna be the person who makes a decision based on whether I get six more years in Washington. I\u2019m going to make the decision based on what think about the institutions.\u201d
The Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh by 50-48 margin on Saturday.<\/p>\n

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