On Monday, Republican senators learned that their Arizona colleague Jeff Flake would be absent for much of the month of August, missing two full weeks of votes and potentially causing problems for the judicial confirmations schedule. Frustration with the decision grew among Senate offices and boiled over into media, ultimately reaching conservative lawyer James Hasson, who tweeted that Flake was “screwing the GOP caucus” with his decision to spend time in Zimbabwe as an official election observer.
Hasson wrote that Flake’s absence meant the Senate Judiciary Committee couldn’t advance President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. “He’s either doing it intentionally or he’s doing it because he just doesn’t care and would rather vacation,” he claimed. (Hasson’s original tweet has nearly 30,000 likes and 8,500 retweets.)
So is Flake really screwing Trump’s judicial nominees by living his best life? Probably not.
For starters, it’s not clear how much voting time Flake will actually be missing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scrapped the chamber’s full August recess in order to spend time approving nominees and crafting spending bills, but senators will still take at least one week off starting August 6. Hasson, along with a number of Senate Republicans, were under the impression that Flake would be out of town until after the work week following the recess—meaning, he would miss two full weeks of votes. And in their defense, Flake’s office even told MSNBC’s All In that the senator would be gone for three weeks. But Flake told Politico’s Burgess Everett on Tuesday that he would be returning earlier than that, meaning he would only end up missing this past week’s votes.
I asked Flake about this, he said he’s just going for a few days. Expects to be back after next week’s recess. https://t.co/n1ocZJ3hPh
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) July 31, 2018
And if Flake does return after next week’s recess, his trip won’t have slowed down judicial confirmations in the slightest—according to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The Committee doesn’t have a markup this week and then goes into recess, so this won’t be an issue,” the committee’s spokesperson told TWS on Tuesday. “As evidenced by today’s confirmation of Britt Grant to the 11th circuit, we don’t have any indication that Sen. Flake’s absence will impede consideration of judicial nominations.”
None of this is to say that Hasson was completely making things up. One GOP Senate aide confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Republican lawmakers and staffers had aired complaints about Flake’s absence, specifically that the retiring senator’s trip would hurt campaign efforts.
“There’s some concern that keeping the vice president close by in Washington to break ties while Senator Flake is in Africa keeps him off the campaign trail, where he could be helping Republicans maintain their majorities in the House and Senate,” the aide said.
But there appears to have been a miscommunication about how long Flake would be out of town—either that, or the senator has cut short his trip. Hasson later said that if Everett’s report is true, the scheduling change happened overnight. Another GOP Senate aide expressed a similar sentiment during a conversation with TWS.
Flake’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
