This isn\u2019t the first time he\u2019s made this kind of threat.<\/b>
\nSen. Jeff Flake, the lame-duck Arizona senator who\u2019s long clashed with President Donald Trump, is once again threatening to use his position to express concerns about executive power and the fate of the Russia investigation.
It\u2019s not an empty threat. But it\u2019s not yet clear to what extent he\u2019ll follow through.
Flake said on Wednesday that he would oppose all judicial nominees coming through the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate floor until Majority Leader Mitch McConnell puts a bill protecting special counsel Robert Mueller up for a vote.
\u201cI have informed the majority leader I will not vote to advance any of the 21 judicial nominees pending in the Judiciary Committee or vote to confirm the 32 judges awaiting confirmation on the Senate floor until… [the bill] is brought to the full Senate for a vote,\u201d Flake said in a speech at the Capitol.
In making this threat, he\u2019s attempting to hit McConnell on something he cares about quite a bit: his goal to push through as many conservative judicial nominees as possible. It\u2019s something the leader has emphasized repeatedly and a message he came back to on Wednesday while laying out his congressional priorities.
The legislation, a bipartisan bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Cory Booker (D-NJ), would ensure that the special counsel can only be fired by a Senate-confirmed Justice Department official. It would also enable Mueller to request a formal review into any kind of potential removal and guarantee the preservation of staffing and materials tied to the special counsel\u2019s investigation. The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in April, but McConnell refused to let it onto the Senate floor when Flake and Coons tired to force a vote on Wednesday.
Without Flake\u2019s vote, it\u2019s possible that nominees would not be able to advance out of the Judiciary Committee given the narrow one-person Republican majority on the panel. If Flake withheld his vote on the floor, Republicans would also likely have to use Vice President Mike Pence as a tiebreaker as judicial nominees come up for consideration.
In both cases, however, there are ways for McConnell to just barrel forward: He can move nominees even if they haven\u2019t been approved by committee, and he could likely keep the Republican conference united on most judicial picks.
Flake\u2019s stonewalling could definitely make things a bit more complicated. What remains to be seen is what his actual execution will look like.
Flake has, after all, used this kind of threat in the past, only to ultimately soften his opposition. Most recently, he expressed concerns about sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and even said he wouldn\u2019t vote on the nominee until an FBI investigation was conducted \u2014 only to wind up very anticlimactically supporting his confirmation after a rushed investigation. He\u2019s also levied the threat of voting against Trump\u2019s appellate court nominees if action wasn\u2019t taken related to tariffs, opposition he dropped after the Senate voted on a purely symbolic measure related to trade.
It\u2019s unclear how far he\u2019ll go this time around.<\/p>\n

\n

Similarity rank: 22<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: -0.3<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

TW posts: 30<\/div>\n

TW reposts: 263<\/div>\n

TW likes: 963<\/div>\n

TW sentiment: 10<\/div>\n<\/div>\n