WASHINGTON — A senior GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee predicted Sunday that President Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee will get confirmed with Democratic support.
“If he does well at the hearing, he will get, my belief is 55 (votes) or higher,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told “Fox News Sunday.”
High-stakes confirmation hearings kick off Tuesday in the Senate for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick to succeed swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy. If confirmed, he’d cement a conservative majority at the high court.
Democrats have tried — unsuccessfully — to delay the Kavanaugh hearings, citing everything from Michael Cohen accusing Trump of criminal wrongdoing in court to the White House’s decision to withhold 100,000 pages of records from Kavanaugh’s service in the George W. Bush White House.
“They are suppressing these documents,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of the White House. “If we are lucky we will see 6 percent of all of the documents … that could be produced to reflect on Kavanaugh’s true position on issues.
“The White House (is) saying the American people have no right to know,” Durbin said.
Liberal activists have warned that a vote for Kavanaugh could mean an end to protections for abortion rights and would establish an “imperial presidency” with no checks on Trump. The stakes are so high that some have suggested Democrats should just walk out en masse from the Kavanaugh hearings this week.
But Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said it’s “much more powerful” if Democrats stay and ask tough questions of the nominee.
“If we just walked out, it would simply be one side asking the questions,” Klobuchar told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “So I don’t think that’s the way you examine a nominee and get the facts out.”
Trump’s first nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed in April in a vote of 54-45 with the help of several red state Democrats: Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.).
All three face tough re-election fights in November in states Trump won handily.
