Heidi Heitkamp \u2014 said she’d oppose the Supreme Court nominee. <\/a><\/strong>Heitkamp, facing a tough re-election fight next month, said she was concerned about his past conduct and felt that his angry attacks on Democrats during last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing raised questions about his “current temperament, honesty and impartiality.”<\/p>\nHowever, in a potential sign of momentum for Kavanaugh, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., told CNN that “we’ve seen no additional corroborating information” for the accusations and that the investigation had been comprehensive. Flake, who’s not stated his position on the nomination, was among three Republicans who had pressed President Donald Trump to order the renewed FBI background check.<\/p>\n
Another GOP lawmakers who has publicly taken no stance, Susan Collins of Maine, also called the probe “a very thorough investigation” and said she’d read the documents later. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski said she’d read the report.<\/p>\n
Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia also has not declared how he’ll vote.<\/p>\n
The battling commenced as the conservative jurist’s prospects for winning Senate confirmation remained at the mercy of five undeclared senators, including the three Republicans, with an initial, critical vote looming Friday. It followed the FBI’s early-morning release of its investigation.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing in it that we didn’t already know,” Grassley declared. He said he based his view on a briefing from committee aides and added, “This investigation found no hint of misconduct.”<\/p>\n
Other Republicans who’d already voiced support for Kavanaugh echoed Grassley, saying after a briefing that there’d been no corroboration of wrongdoing by Kavanaugh. Said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., “The senators who requested the supplemental background check got what they requested, and I am ready to vote.”<\/p>\n
Top Democrats fired back at Grassley after getting their own briefing.<\/p>\n
The Judiciary panel’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, said it appeared that the White House had “blocked the FBI from doing its job.” She said that while Democrats had agreed to limit the probe’s scope, “we did not agree that the White House should tie the FBI’s hands.”<\/p>\n
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has already started a process that will produce a crucial test vote in his polarized chamber Friday on Kavanaugh’s fate. Should Republicans get the majority of votes they need \u2014 and Vice President Mike Pence is available to cast the tie-breaker, if necessary \u2014 that would set up a decisive roll call on his confirmation, likely over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Several senators said 10 witnesses were interviewed for the report. One senator said it was about 50 pages long.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A high-stakes partisan row broke out Thursday over a confidential FBI report about allegations that Brett Kavanaugh sexually abused women three decades ago, with Republicans claiming investigators found “no hint of misconduct” but Democrats accusing the White House of slapping crippling constraints on the probe. At the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=154806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154841,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154806\/revisions\/154841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=154806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=154806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=154806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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