Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were reeling Friday morning over the GOP majority’s decision to push forward with Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
Sen. Chris Coons reportedly became very emotional upon learning his Republican friend and committee-mate Sen. Jeff Flake had announced he’d vote in favor of Kavanaugh — a day after the judge defended himself in a hearing from a woman accusing him of sexual assault.
“Oh f–k,” Coons said, according to CNN. “We each make choices for our own reason. I’m struggling, sorry.”
Meanwhile, five other Democrats stormed out of the committee meeting when their cross-aisle colleagues scheduled a vote on Kavanaugh later in the day, with a furious Sen. Kamala Harris blasting the GOP members as “bullies” for “ramming through” the nomination without doing more investigation into his past.
“This has been about raw power,” Harris told reporters outside the meeting.
“It’s been pushing and pushing and ramming this thing through. Because they have the power, as opposed to the integrity to say let the American people know what’s about to happen. Have transparency in the system, have integrity in the system. This is a failure of this body to do what it has always said what it’s about, which is [to] be deliberative.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal also spoke, calling Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a “powerfully credible sexual assault survivor” and saying the committee had betrayed her and the two other women who have accused the nominee of sexual misconduct.
“All of America is watching the United States Senate today and they should be deeply disturbed, embarrassed, ashamed of supposedly the world’s greatest deliberative body sinking to a low that denies sex assault survivors the right to be heard,” he fumed.
Kavanaugh has denied all allegations of misconduct.
Two of the five walkouts — Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Cory Booker — eventually returned to the meeting, but Harris, Blumenthal and Sen. Mazie Hirono remained MIA as of midday.
Additional reporting by Nikki Schwab




