Former President George W. Bush called Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., several times in recent weeks to urge him to vote in support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“He obviously worked closely with Brett, so he’s a big fan,” Flake said in an interview with the Atlantic. “And he’s called me and a number of my colleagues.”
Kavanaugh worked in the White House during Bush’s presidency. A spokesman for Bush told Politico that the former president stands by Kavanaugh despite a Senate testimony from Christine Blasey Ford accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were both in high school, an accusation Kavanaugh denies.
Bush has been reaching out to fence-sitting senators in recent days, reported the Washington Post.
Much of the Atlantic interview, conducted Friday and made public Saturday, centered on how Flake shifted his views regarding Kavanaugh’s nomination, in which he ultimately asserted that he could not vote for Kavanaugh on the Senate floor without an FBI investigation. He still plans to vote for Kavanaugh, he said in the interview, unless he learns something new from the investigation.
“I’m a conservative. He’s a conservative,” Flake said. “I plan to support him unless they turn up something — and they might.”
After announcing Friday morning that he would vote for Kavanaugh, Flake said that he had still felt unsettled. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who is a close friend of his, pleaded with the Senate Judiciary Committee to delay a final floor vote for a week to allow for an FBI investigation. He won over Flake, who said he had not slept the night before and said he saw how Blasey Ford’s interview “struck a chord” with women voters.
“I know Chris,” Flake said. “We’ve traveled together a lot. We’ve sat down with Robert Mugabe. We’ve been chased by elephants, literally, in Mozambique. We trust each other. And I thought, ‘If we could actually get something like what he was asking for — an investigation limited in time, limited in scope — we could maybe bring a little unity.'”
