Senate Republicans are pushing for the Ethics Committee to examine the tactics Democrats employed in their effort to keep Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh off the bench.
“I have a lot of questions and I certainly think we need to get to the bottom of some of the antics that were used,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Monday. Cornyn said the six-member, bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee or the 21-member Judiciary Committee could be employed to conduct the probe.
Republicans believe Democrats broke the rules governing the nomination process in several ways and as a result provoked a divisive and contentious nomination battle.
“Obviously if that becomes the new norm, I think that doesn’t bode well for the Senate and for the nominations process,” Cornyn said. “So I’d support getting to the bottom of that.”
On Monday during a ceremonial swearing in ceremony, President Trump apologized to Kavanaugh for “a campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception.”
Republicans believe Democrats were to blame. They want to know how Christine Blasey Ford’s letter to Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ended up in the hands of a reporter despite her request that her explosive sexual misconduct allegation against Kavanaugh be kept private.
Feinstein denies leaking the letter after receiving it in July. She told the Washington Examiner she withheld it at the request of Ford and is not certain who leaked it to the media in September, just days before Kavanaugh’s nomination was to advance to the Senate floor.
The GOP is eager to learn more about how Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of attempting to sexually assault her at a party while the two were in high school, was steered by Feinstein toward Democratic lawyers Debra Katz and Michael Bromwich.
Cornyn said he also wants the Ethics Committee to examine the actions of Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and other Democrats on the Judiciary panel who during the confirmation process leaked “committee confidential” documents from Kavanaugh’s years working for President George W. Bush. And, it should examine Feinstein’s office for “sitting on information that should have been processed by the committee,” Cornyn said, referring to Ford’s letter.
Republicans have argued that Feinstein should have shown the letter to Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, so that it could have been examined and the matter investigated during the normal confirmation process.
Instead, it surfaced through a news report after the confirmation hearing had ended, making it impossible for Ford to maintain anonymity.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he wants an investigation.
“I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that a number of things happened over the course of the hearing that undermine our credibility,” TIllis said. “So I think it would be helpful.”
Democrats reject the charge that they acted nefariously.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans acted improperly by failing to disclose all of Kavanaugh’s memos and emails written during his tenure working for President George W. Bush.
“It was not bipartisan,” Hirono told the Washington Examiner. “There were tons of documents we should have gotten that were kept committee confidential but not in a bipartisan way. We should have a better understood process.”
So far, nobody has taken an official step to launch an investigation.
Grassley has signaled he wants to repair frayed bipartisan relationships on the Judiciary panel, which was bitterly divided over Kavanaugh and the handling of his nomination.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a member of the panel who tried to bridge the divide by helping Democrats win a weeklong FBI background probe of Kavanaugh, told the Washington Examiner Monday the two parties should just drop it.
“I’d rather just move on, all sides,” Flake said. “For us to continue to fight this fight afterwards is just not good.”
