Senator Dick Durbin throws down the gauntlet on Brett Kavanaugh

| 9:16 am EDT September 16, 2018
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Are the eleven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee willing to risk rubber-stamping a Supreme Court nominee who is also an alleged rapist? If they approve him, and then his confirmation collapses before a full Senate vote, the debacle will get hung around their necks – and they know it. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin is now throwing down the gauntlet when it comes to the committee vote on Kavanaugh.

Senator Durbin posted this message on Saturday night: “I am calling on Senate Republicans to delay next week’s Judiciary Committee vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. This is the most important Supreme Court vacancy in a generation, and President Trump has chosen Judge Kavanaugh to be the decisive vote on the health, privacy, and rights of all Americans, and whether our Constitution will protect everyone or just the wealthy and powerful. The American people deserve to know who Judge Kavanaugh is, but Republicans are trying to rush through this nomination while concealing critical parts of the nominee’s record.”

He continued: “There are far too many questions swirling around this nomination. Kavanaugh provided misleading or inaccurate answers to many questions. And Republicans are hiding documents for 35 months when he was a top advisor to President Bush and worked on controversial issues like abortion, torture, warrantless wiretapping, and banning same-sex marriage. Let me add – it is up to survivors of sexual assault alone to decide whether to come forward. It is completely unacceptable to attack anyone who alleges she has been assaulted. If the #MeToo movement has taught us anything, it is that we must respect and listen to survivors of sexual assault, regardless of the age of those involved or when the alleged attack took place.”

In so doing, Dick Durbin has made clear that he and his fellow Democrats intend to find a way to derail the Brett Kavanaugh nomination on behalf of the American people before he can approved by the full Senate. As such, the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee will be taking an awfully big risk if they vote to advance his nomination out of committee.