[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 166 (Friday, October 5, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6563-S6564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it was 88 days ago that President 
Trump announced his nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the 
current vacancy on the Supreme Court.
  Judge Kavanaugh is a nominee of the very highest caliber, a brilliant 
legal mind and an accomplished jurist with a proven devotion to the 
rule of law. Today, the Senate has the opportunity to advance his 
nomination. Every one of us will go on record with one of the most 
consequential votes you ever cast in the Senate.
  The stakes are always high for a Supreme Court nomination, but, 
colleagues, the extraordinary events of recent weeks have raised them 
even higher this time. When we vote later this morning, we will not 
only be deciding whether to elevate a stunningly well-qualified judge 
to our highest Court. Not anymore. Not after all this. The Senate will 
also be making a statement.
  We will either state that partisan politics can override the 
presumption of innocence, or we will reaffirm that in the United States 
of America, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

  We will either state that facts and evidence can simply be brushed 
aside when politically inconvenient and signal that media bullying and 
mob intimidation are valid tactics for shaping the Senate and that the 
mob can attack and the Senate will cave, or we will stand up and say 
that serious, thoughtful, fact-based deliberation will still define 
this body.
  We will either give notice that totally uncorroborated allegations 
are now officially enough to destroy an American's life, or we will 
declare that our society cannot, must not, will not set the bar so low.
  Today is a pivotal day in the nomination process of this excellent 
judge, but it is a pivotal day for us here in the Senate as well. The 
ideals of justice that have served our Nation so well for so long are 
on full display.
  So let's step back and sample a few of the choice moments that the 
Senate and the American people have been treated to during the 
disgraceful--absolutely disgraceful--spectacle of the last 2 weeks.
  The very night Judge Kavanaugh was announced as the President's 
choice, we heard the junior Senator from Oregon declare that this 
nominee would ``pave the path to tyranny.'' His audience? Crowds of 
far-left protesters, still filling in the blanks on their picket signs. 
They weren't quite sure who the nominee was going to be yet.
  We heard the junior Senator from New Jersey describe Judge 
Kavanaugh's nomination as a great moral struggle in which there are 
just two camps: ``You're either complicit in the evil . . . or you are 
fighting against it.''
  More recently, we heard the junior Senator from Hawaii argue that her 
personal disagreement with Judge Kavanaugh's judicial philosophy 
meant--now, listen to this--he deserved less of a presumption of 
innocence when it came to allegations of misconduct. If you agree with 
her, you are not entitled to the presumption of innocence when it comes 
to allegations of misconduct. That is from a member of the Judiciary 
Committee? That is the definition of ``due process''? Apparently, you 
get due process only if you agree with her.
  Even more recently, we saw the junior Senator from Rhode Island hold 
forth with great confidence--great confidence--offering his expert 
interpretations of goofy jokes in a high school yearbook from the early 
1980s. That was incredibly enlightening. Innocent jokes? Beer-drinking 
references? Oh, no. Our colleague was quite positive there must be some 
other hidden or sinister meanings at play--until, of course, a number 
of Judge Kavanaugh's classmates set him straight earlier this week.
  So stop and consider these snapshots. The absurdity. The absurdity. 
The indignity. This is our approach to confirming a Supreme Court 
Justice? This is the Senate's contribution to public discourse?
  Before the ink had dried on Justice Kennedy's retirement, our 
Democratic colleagues made it perfectly clear what this process would 
be about: delay, obstruct, and resist.
  Before the ink had dried on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, colleagues 
across the aisle--including Democratic members of the Judiciary 
Committee--were racing to announce they had made up their minds and 
were totally opposed to his confirmation.
  Mere hours after Judge Kavanaugh was nominated, my friend the 
Democratic leader promised--``I will oppose him with everything I've 
got,'' he said hours after he was nominated. It was thus abundantly 
clear that his No. 1 political goal was to defeat the nomination by any 
means necessary.
  It was right there from the beginning, a clear declaration, plain as 
day: Nothing--nothing--could get most

[[Page S6564]]

Democrats to consider this nominee with an open mind. It would be 
delaying tactics, obstruction, and the so-called resistance until the 
final vote was called.
  For a few weeks, their efforts played out along the lines that have 
sadly become somewhat ordinary around here. There were excuses for 
delay. Those fell flat. There were gross distortions of Judge 
Kavanaugh's record that were batted down by outside fact-checkers. 
There were all the usual phony, apocalyptic pronouncements that are 
shouted whenever a Republican President dares to nominate a Supreme 
Court Justice. It happens every time. Hostile to women. Hostile to 
vulnerable people. Hostile to workers. The same old tricks. The same 
old playbook. But here was the problem: The old plays weren't working. 
The distortions were being literally drowned out by the facts.
  Senators received and reviewed more pages of background materials on 
Judge Kavanaugh's nomination than for every previous Supreme Court 
nomination combined. We read Judge Kavanaugh's 12-year record of 
judicial rulings from our Nation's second highest court--300-plus 
opinions. We heard sworn testimony and written accounts from hundreds 
of character witnesses from all stages of Judge Kavanaugh's life and 
career. The picture painted by these facts was nothing like the 
caricature--nothing like the caricature.
  So it was clear that the old tactics weren't working and weren't 
going to get the job done. The resistance demanded more. Try something 
new, they said. Well, we all know what happened next. Uncorroborated 
allegations of the most sensitive, most serious sort were quickly 
sharpened into political weapons.
  One such allegation, shared by Dr. Ford in confidence with the 
Democrat side of the Judiciary Committee, somehow mysteriously found 
its way into the press. Chairman Grassley immediately set out on a 
sober, focused search for the truth. The committee collected testimony, 
organized a new hearing, and most recently asked for a supplemental FBI 
background investigation, Judge Kavanaugh's seventh--seventh--FBI 
investigation.
  By any fair standard, the facts--the actual facts--proved to be 
straightforward: no corroborating evidence. None--none--was produced to 
support any of the allegations leveled against Judge Kavanaugh. There 
was no corroborating evidence from the FBI inquiry or from anywhere 
else. Nothing.
  Well, that wasn't enough for our Democratic colleagues, of course. 
The facts were not exactly the point. After all, we sort of get it by 
now. When the very FBI investigation for which they had been clamoring 
turned up no new evidence, the Democrats moved the goalposts yet again.
  I believe the latest story is that the whole investigation is 
invalid--listen to this--because individuals who had only recently been 
told secondhand or thirdhand about nearly 40-year-old allegations 
weren't treated as essential witnesses.
  Let me say that again. The latest story is that the whole 
investigation is invalid because individuals who had only recently been 
told secondhand or thirdhand about nearly 40-year-old allegations 
weren't treated as essential witnesses--never mind that they didn't 
actually witness anything. They didn't witness anything.
  So let's be clear. These are not witnesses. These are people 
supposedly in possession of hearsay that they first heard 35 years 
after the supposed fact. What nonsense.
  The people whom Dr. Ford claimed were witnesses have spoken with the 
FBI. We know that because they, through their attorneys, put out public 
statements saying so. What we know now is what we knew at this time a 
week ago: There is absolutely no corroborating evidence for these 
allegations--the same thing we heard a week ago. If there were, you bet 
we would have heard about it, but there isn't.

  Notwithstanding that, the leak of Dr. Ford's letter--in violation of 
her privacy and against her wishes--opened the floodgates. The feeding 
frenzy was full-on. The weaponization of her letter by the left led to 
a torrent of other, equally uncorroborated allegations. They were 
dumped on Judge Kavanaugh and his family, and, breathlessly, the media 
seized on them--the more outlandish, the better.
  Americans were informed that Judge Kavanaugh masterminded violent 
drug gangs as a young teenager, until that accuser walked her story 
back. We were informed that Judge Kavanaugh beat someone up on a boat 
in a Rhode Island harbor, until that accuser totally recanted. We heard 
another tall tale of physical assault, until that account was 
thoroughly debunked by a sitting Federal judge. Oh, and, yes, we were 
informed that juvenile jokes in his high school yearbook were actually 
sinister secret references.
  Oh, the Keystone Kops were on the case, and Senate Democrats cheered 
them on. They read parts of this uncorroborated, unbelievable mudslide 
into the Senate Record. They cited them in an unofficial letter, 
demanding that Judge Kavanaugh's nomination be withdrawn.
  Were they true? That was quite beside the point, so long as they were 
convenient. Every effort was made to ensure the fact-free verdict of 
the mob and the media would win out over the actual evidence; make sure 
the mob prevails. The uncorroborated mud and the partisan noise and the 
physical intimidation of Members in the Senate will not have the final 
say around here. The Senate will have the final say.
  We are almost at the end of the runway. The crosswinds of anger and 
fear and partisanship have blown strong these past weeks. They have 
harmed a good man and his family. They have tarnished the dignity of 
this institution, but all of it can end today. The time has come to 
vote. The Senate stands on the threshold of a golden opportunity.
  We have the opportunity to advance the nomination of an incredibly 
well-qualified and well-respected jurist to a post that demands such 
excellence. We have the opportunity to put Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the 
Supreme Court, where his distinguished service will make us and our 
Nation proud for years to come. We have the opportunity to do even 
more.
  Today, we can send a message to the American people that some core 
principles remain unfettered by the partisan passions of this moment. 
Facts matter. Fairness matters. The presumption of innocence is 
sacrosanct. The Senate has turned its back on these things before but 
never for long and never without deep regret.
  This institution does not look back proudly on the era of Joseph 
McCarthy nor on any of the other times when the politics of personal 
destruction poisoned its judgment. No, the Senate looks back on those 
things with shame and with the conviction that we cannot go down that 
road again. We know the Senate is better than this. We know the Nation 
deserves better than this.
  By confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, this 
brilliant jurist will be charged with upholding the rule of law and 
honoring American justice. We must hold ourselves to that very same 
standard. We must seize the golden opportunity before us today, to 
confirm a Supreme Court Justice who will make us proud, and to reaffirm 
our own commitment to the justice that every single American deserves.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. As a reminder to our guests in the 
Galleries, expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted in 
the Senate Galleries.