Floor Statements

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I was greatly encouraged to hear yesterday's announcement by the administration that the United States, Mexico, and Canada have now successfully come to a trilateral agreement to modernize NAFTA.

As the Presiding Officer knows, this is important not only to border States like ours; this is important to the entire country. About 5 million jobs in the United States depend on binational trade with Mexico, and about 8 million depend on binational trade with Canada. So this is really important to our country and, I think, will hopefully calm a lot of anxiety over some of the various trade disputes that we have had recently.

Based on the deal reached Sunday, Canada will now join a pact with the United States and Mexico agreed to in August. The newly named United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement will greatly benefit North American commerce and modernize areas where our economy has evolved since the 1990s.

When we think about what life was like back in the 1990s, digital commerce was unheard of; oil and gas exploration using modern techniques like fracking and horizontal drilling, which have produced the shale energy revolution in the United States, didn't exist back then; and, of course, as many of my friends in the energy business tell me, the shale we produce oil and gas from in the United States doesn't stop at the Rio Grande.

Mexico has opened up its economy, greatly allowing foreign investment and embracing some of these modern techniques, which will, I think, have a revolutionary impact on Mexico and its economy. My guiding mantra over the last year for these negotiations has been what is known as the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take: First, do no harm. That is what Ambassador Lighthizer and Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce, told the Finance Committee when they were confirmed.

I argue that we have to fix NAFTA to be sure because after 24 years, parts of it are outdated, as I said, but not nix it entirely. Although, we are still reviewing the fine print of the agreement, I

think we should be proud of what has been accomplished.

Since last August, Ambassador Lighthizer and his team at USTR, the U.S. Trade Representative, have negotiated for countless hours with our southern and northern neighbors. The road to an updated agreement has not been easy, but I believe those efforts will pay off, and soon the responsibility will be ours in the Senate to vote on this agreement. It will be a few months off, to be sure, but we will have a role in voting on the agreement.

As President Trump said, the new agreement will fix deficiencies in the original NAFTA, reduce trade barriers and open markets for U.S. farmers and manufacturers. I am particularly hearing a lot from my folks in the agriculture sector in Texas that they are excited with some of the negotiations with Canada with regard to agriculture. It modernizes rules for dairy and auto and financial services, as well as many others. The agriculture sector that I think was most concerned about some of these negotiations is breathing a giant sigh of relief.

This is a significant development in our trade policy and a great testament to the productive diplomacy the administration has been engaged in since day one. Sometimes it may seem a little bit like a bull in a China shop, but when you produce good results, maybe that is worth it.

Promises were made to update NAFTA, of course, as long as our neighbors collaborated in good faith, and those promises now appear to have been kept. As I have said, millions of Americans' jobs are supported by trade with Mexico and Canada.

In Texas, NAFTA has been one of the cornerstones of our economy, which helped cause us to create more jobs than any other State in the country in recent years. We have the second largest State economy in the United States, so Mexico, being our top import and export partner, obviously, has implications that are big not only to us but truly national and, I believe, international in scope.

Over the course of the last quarter century since NAFTA was signed, we have reaped benefits in terms of jobs, income, and cultural exchange. These benefits are so significant and widespread that they can't be fully measured. They are arguably why Texas has had more at stake than our 49 counterparts throughout the NAFTA reform process.

This new, enhanced agreement is a positive step. I thank Ambassador Lighthizer, as well as President Trump and all of our U.S., Canadian, and Mexican officials who were involved in crafting this document. I look forward to working with the chairman of the Finance Committee and all of our members on the Finance Committee, as well as the entire Senate, moving forward as we consider congressional implementation of this agreement.

Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh

Mr. President, I wish to turn briefly to the ongoing confirmation process of Judge Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. I have already said publicly on more than one occasion that this is a dark day; this is a dark period for the U.S. Senate. Never before have we seen a nominee to the Supreme Court or any court treated so badly, although we do know that starting with Robert Bork's confirmation hearing, the gloves came off, and these confirmation processes became, unfortunately, all too ugly.

As we know now, there has been a supplemental background investigation ordered by the FBI on allegations that were sprung on Judge Kavanaugh on the eve of his confirmation. There was never a whiff of these allegations during Judge Kavanaugh's six previous background investigations by the FBI and by the Judiciary Committee and other committees. I think it is telling that the aiders and abettors of this last-minute ambush include political operatives masquerading as disinterested lawyers with only their client's best wishes at heart.

This past Sunday, we heard from Rachel Mitchell, an investigative counsel from Arizona, who interviewed both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh at last week's hearing. I appreciate the professionalism with which she approached this job. It was not one that many would have sought because she knew, and we all knew, she would be thrust into the vortex of this huge national debate and the circuslike atmosphere that, unfortunately, the Judiciary Committee had become. Yet she did do a public service. She was not pressured in any way to present her own analysis following the hearing, but she chose to do so. What she said, based on her experience as a sex crimes prosecutor, somebody who routinely deals with victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault--she has developed a lot of expertise and wisdom when it comes to approaching these kinds of cases. I think we were the beneficiaries, the country was the beneficiary, of her expertise and knowledge in the way she conducted her careful but respectful interrogation of Dr. Ford.

Her analysis contains crucial points that the FBI's background investigation may flesh out this week even further. First, she said this was not a case of he said, she said; this was a case of she said, they said. In other words, every witness alleged to have been present at the time Dr. Ford alleged that Judge Kavanaugh, when he was 17 years old, physically assaulted her said that they have no memory of such an event or knowledge of such an event. In one case, Dr. Ford's close friend, Leland Keyser, said that she doesn't even remember ever meeting Brett Kavanaugh. Similarly, Patrick Smyth and Mark Judge--two other alleged witnesses Dr. Ford named--said the event never happened. This is not just a case where there is an allegation and no corroboration; this is a case of an allegation and negative corroboration.

I mentioned Dr. Ford's lawyers earlier, and I want to return to that in just a moment. Some of their actions suggest they were more interested in using Dr. Ford for partisan purposes than ensuring her story was properly considered alongside other information during the standard committee process.

We all remember when Dr. Ford's hearing was delayed, the committee was informed by her lawyers that Dr. Ford's trauma prevented her from flying because she experienced claustrophobia. Then, during her testimony, watched by as many as 20 million people in this country, Dr. Ford said she flies frequently for hobbies and work. One has to wonder, why was this delay orchestrated? Was it a stunt concocted by her lawyers to buy more time? You have to wonder.

The truth is, her lawyers were involved long before that point. When the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, our colleague from California, met with Judge Kavanaugh one-on-one on August 20, she already knew about the allegation, which was dated July 30. On August 20, she met with Judge Kavanaugh. She had in her files an allegation dated July 30 that she shared with no one, and she didn't discuss it with Judge Kavanaugh during their private meeting. Instead, the ranking member recommended that Dr. Ford engage highly partisan operatives to represent her instead of referring the allegations to the FBI.

In other words, why would you take an allegation of sexual assault and keep it in your file and recommend the complainant contact politically active Democratic lawyers? Wouldn't it make sense to provide the allegation to the FBI right away so that the FBI could conduct whatever investigation it saw fit? Unfortunately, she neither presented that to the FBI on a timely basis, nor did she give Judge Kavanaugh a chance to refute it when she had plenty of opportunity to do so when he met with her in her office.

We know the lawyers who have been representing Dr. Ford have played an active role since early August. They were already engaged when Judge Kavanaugh sat through his initial weeklong confirmation hearing. By that point, the lawyers had already insisted that Dr. Ford take a polygraph, although they will not share with the Senate Judiciary Committee or with anybody else the underlying questions and interview. All they shared with us is the conclusion of the polygrapher. Yet none of this--the lawyers, the allegations, the steps being taken--were shared with the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was initially assigned the responsibility of vetting the nominee through an extensive background investigation and, obviously, through the 1,200-some written questions for the record and the hours upon hours of hearings that everybody in the country could witness.

None of this came up at that first hearing, not even behind closed doors,

which is the procedure by which sensitive personal matters are presented to the nominee if Senators on the Judiciary Committee have questions. What we actually try to do in the Senate is not to embarrass or harass or terrorize either the nominee or the witnesses who might have information relevant to the confirmation. We actually have a careful, respectful, and confidential process by which that information can first be supplied to the Judiciary Committee behind closed doors. That could and should have been the process used in this case, but it wasn't.

Here we are a few weeks later. We have had another hearing, at Dr. Ford's request, in which she shared her story to the best of her ability. I am actually glad she testified. That was her desire, although I believe she did not have to be put through the wringer the Senate Judiciary Committee has put her through. But that has not been our fault so much as it has been the fault of this orchestrated effort.

It is not fair to Judge Kavanaugh, I believe, to string this matter along further. It is not fair to his family, either, or to the many women who have stood with him every step of the way. This process has taken a toll on all of them and all of us.

Now that the FBI is doing a supplemental background investigation, which will conclude hopefully in the next few days, the allegation has been, well, the judge was so angry at the hearing defending his honor and good name against these allegations that this shows a lack of judicial temperament.

If you were accused falsely of committing a crime, wouldn't you be angry too? Wouldn't you want to clear your good name? That is exactly what Judge Kavanaugh did. I think it was a moving, emotional defense of his good name and character.

Our friends who are now making this accusation that somehow this demonstrates his lack of judicial temperament are ignoring his 12 years on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the fact the American Bar Association's Standing Committee that reviews these judicial nominees has found him unanimously ``well qualified,'' based in part on his good character and temperament. This is a red herring. You can't accuse somebody of a crime and expect them to sit there and take it. That is illogical, unreasonable.

Now the argument, too, is this: We really have the judge now; we have him. We caught him in some discrepancies--based on what? Based on his high school yearbook. Man, this has been quite an investigation if we are going back into somebody's high school yearbook and asking them to decipher things that would be, I think the judge said, cringeworthy that adolescent boys and adolescents do in their high school yearbook.

I guess this should be a lesson for all of our pages and others who are still in high school that if you have the opportunity to ascend to the highest Court in the land or other important responsibility, the U.S. Senate is going to go back and scour your high school yearbook and ask you about entries made not by you but by others in your yearbook.

This has become a national embarrassment. I said at the hearing that it reminded me of what I read about the McCarthy hearings. Joseph McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin was riding high upon the concerns the American people had about communists in government. He went too far, and at one point he was called down, ultimately left the Senate--was expelled from the Senate or resigned from the Senate; I can't remember which. He was asked by one of the lawyers who was representing a young man who was being interrogated who finally asked Senator McCarthy: I have had yet to gauge the depth of your cruelty and your recklessness. At long last, sir, have you no decency?

I recited those lines at the hearing for Judge Kavanaugh because I think, indeed, this whole process has been unfair to Dr. Ford, to Judge Kavanaugh. It has been cruel to the judge's family, and it has been reckless in the extreme. I think it has been an embarrassment. I think it is a stain on the reputation and the standing of the U.S. Senate.

So as the supplemental FBI investigation wraps up, let's be mindful of what our colleagues across the aisle have said they expected from this supplemental background investigation because they, too, understood we were approaching the end of this process. For example, the senior Senator from Minnesota said: ``Let's give this one week.'' She said that last Friday. She indicated her support for the investigation, even saying that we are all in a better spot now than we were before. Well, I hope that is still her position.

We had our colleagues across the aisle agree to both the timeline and the validity of this last step in Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation. The junior Senator from Delaware, during the hearing, called for the same amount of time, just 1 more week. In a television interview, the junior Senator from Hawaii said that 7 days is enough time to ``get to the bottom'' of these allegations. So I hope our colleagues will remember their own words and their own statements, even though, as we all know, no supplemental information will change their vote.

This is, to me, the irony of where we find ourselves. I think it was Judge Kavanaugh who said a fair process starts with an open mind and then listening to both sides, but Judge Kavanaugh doesn't have a judge or jury in this confirmation process who has an open mind. All of the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have said they unequivocally oppose his confirmation. So what do they expect this additional supplemental investigation to disclose that might possibly persuade them they were wrong?

Well, it is not about a search for the truth. This is about search and destroy. I have said this is what I hate most about Washington, DC--the political environment in which we find ourselves. It is not just about winning an argument. It is not just about winning an election or winning a vote in the Congress. It is about the politics of personal destruction. That is what we are seeing here. It is an orchestrated effort from start to finish. That is why I think this is such an embarrassment to the Senate. If we somehow decide that people can be essentially convicted of a crime based on an allegation with no evidence, what does that say about our commitment to the Constitution itself, the due process of law, and the presumption of guilt?

I know our colleagues will say: Well, this is a job interview. This is not just a job interview. This isn't just even about Judge Kavanaugh and his confirmation process. This is about us. This is about our national commitment to the Constitution, one that guarantees your liberty unless the government can come in and prove a case against you, where you have a chance to confront the witnesses against you, where you enjoy a presumption of innocence. This is no longer a job interview. This is no longer even just about Judge Kavanaugh.

A vote against Judge Kavanaugh implies that he is guilty not only of teenage misconduct but guilty of perjury now. That is what a vote against Judge Kavanaugh implies. A vote against Judge Kavanaugh is a ``yes'' vote for more search-and-destroy efforts against public servants and judicial nominees and more ambushing nominees after crucial information is withheld for weeks at a time.

We all know how the Senate operates. It operates on the basis of precedent. Once something has been done, it is precedent for what will be done in the future. If this is the new precedent for the U.S. Senate, woe be to us.

A vote against Kavanaugh is a ``yes'' vote for more of these despicable tactics being used time and time again in the future--coat hangers being sent to the offices of some our colleagues, fundraising bribes being offered, mobs attacking Senators and their families at restaurants.

The American people deserve a final and definitive resolution to this process. Judge Kavanaugh deserves the same, as does the Supreme Court. This week after the supplemental background investigation of the FBI concludes, there will be a vote. I trust that Judge Kavanaugh will then finally be confirmed. Then, hopefully, the Senate will come to its senses and realize how wrong, how embarrassing, and how disgraceful this process has been not only to Dr. Ford but to Judge Kavanaugh as well. I hope and pray we will come to our senses.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, after the tumultuous week just past, after the fireworks during the Kavanaugh hearing--the second hearing--I think we all needed a little bit of time to decompress and to digest what exactly happened. I am, of course, referring to this contentious hearing over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. It was fair and necessary, in my view, to hold the hearing because Dr. Christine Ford, against her wishes, as it turned out, was thrust into the national spotlight by our Democratic colleagues. Once there, we believe she deserved her chance to tell her story. Just as importantly, Judge Kavanaugh deserved a chance to speak to the American people and to clear his name.

I have told people before, and I will say it again, I want to make sure Dr. Ford is treated no worse than my own daughters would be if they found themselves in this unfortunate circumstance or my mother or my wife. Similarly, I think Judge Kavanaugh should be treated as well as we would want our father, our brother, our son, or somebody's husband were they to find themselves in his circumstances.

This is about fairness in the end, fair process, one that gives everybody a chance to tell their story. One of the things that makes this so different is we know many of the Senators listening to this testimony--almost half of them--throughout the Senate had already made up their minds. I would hate to walk into a courtroom where the judge and the jury had already made up their minds without even hearing from the witnesses. Unfortunately, that is the kind of hearing room Judge Kavanaugh walked into last week.

We have heard Dr. Ford's story, and we have heard Judge Kavanaugh's strong and forceful rebuttal. What is so unusual now--I guess the goalposts seem to shift every day, maybe even every hour--some people are saying Judge Kavanaugh's rebuttal and his denial was so forceful, and he was obviously so upset, that somehow negatively reflects on his judicial temperament, and then he is disqualified for trying to defend his good name.

I will defy any Member of the Senate--frankly, anybody in the country--whose reputation and way of life was threatened with destruction, whose reputation as a father, as a husband, as a member of the second highest court in the country under similar attack on their reputation and their good name not to be angry about that if they believed the allegations against them were completely false. What we found is, there is simply no evidence to corroborate or confirm Dr. Ford's allegation.

We have all heard the individuals who Dr. Ford said were present the night of the alleged assault either have no recollection of such a party or say the assault never happened. That includes one of Dr. Ford's best friends at the time, Leland Keyser, who said she doesn't remember ever meeting Brett Kavanaugh and certainly she wasn't present at an event such as Dr. Ford described.

This brings us back to the hearing last week. We watched Judge Kavanaugh defend his personal integrity and his good name in front of the Nation. True, he did demonstrate some righteous indignation at the way our colleagues across the aisle have handled this confirmation. He became very emotional as he choked back tears, but I must say, he wasn't the only one choking back tears during his defense of his good name and reputation. There were many eyes around the room and across the country that were not dry. He didn't aim his fury at Dr. Ford but rather at the atrocious way the claims were sprung on him at the eleventh hour, using an unfair process that violated the rules of the Judiciary Committee. They were not handled in the normal way, which would have respected the privacy and the desire for confidentiality for Dr. Ford but at the same time made sure a good man was not smeared in public by allegations that could not be proven.

We know when Dr. Ford's allegations were brought to the attention of the Judiciary Committee in July--specifically to the ranking member, Senator Feinstein--she didn't share those with either the FBI, which she ultimately did long after the first hearing, or with the Judiciary Committee background investigation professional staff. That is the way they should have been handled. As a matter of fact, Dr. Ford said when she heard we would have interviewed her in California in a private, confidential setting about her allegations, she said: Nobody ever told me that.

She was thrust against her will into this national spotlight and circuslike atmosphere. Somebody is not helping Dr. Ford. Somebody is thrusting Dr. Ford into this position against her desires and expressed wishes, leaking her letter, which she asked remain confidential. It is, unfortunately, a pattern that is beginning to develop here.

That brings us back to the hearing last week. As I said, we watched the judge defend his integrity in front the Nation, but we know the allegations of Dr. Ford were held until the time was right, when they could be unveiled and weaponized and inflict the maximum amount of damage.

By the look on some of my colleagues' faces during the hearing last week, Judge Kavanaugh struck a nerve. I think they started to realize what these last couple of weeks must have been like for him and his family--his wife, his two daughters, his parents--and the girls he coached in basketball. I think that is why the judge felt like he had to defend forcefully his

good name and reputation against unproven allegations. And who among us would do anything less?

We don't live in a country where once accused of something you are assumed to be guilty. That would be a violation in a court of due process of law. There is the presumption of innocence and the requirement that if you are going to make serious allegations against somebody--and, in this case, allegations of a crime--you have to meet certain standards. You have to prove it.

But here, as we found out, Dr. Ford's allegations were not proven. All of the people who, according to her, could substantiate her allegations said: I don't remember anything like that. I was never present at such an event.

But that doesn't seem to bother any of our colleagues who had already decided to oppose this nomination. That is one of the things I hate the most about Washington, DC. It is not enough to win an election. It is not enough to win an argument for some people. They want to destroy you. It is an ugly, cruel, and reckless way to treat another human being.

I wish I could say that some of my colleagues across the aisle expressed one ounce of remorse and publicly stated: You know, the way we handled this might have been wrong. Maybe we should have done it a different way. Maybe we should have raised the issue much earlier, as the normal way of processing such an allegation would be handled, in a way that protected Dr. Ford and gave her a safe environment to tell her story and be questioned by the bipartisan professional staff who handle background investigations, as well as the FBI.

We could have done that in a way that respected Dr. Ford's wishes, but we did not because of the way this has been mishandled. So far as I can tell, none of our colleagues across the aisle who have foisted this unfair, embarrassing, disgraceful process on Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh--none of them--expressed any regret or remorse or offered any apologies.

They haven't been willing to admit that their stealth tactics have done damage to one man and his family, to the Senate, to the Supreme Court, and to our national fabric, at the same time exposing Dr. Ford to the sort of public scrutiny and spotlight about which she asked--she implored--Senator Feinstein: Please, protect me from that sort of environment.

We could have done so if it had been handled the right way. Our colleagues across the aisle have simply refused to cooperate at all in the process. They called for an additional supplemental FBI background investigation, but when we tried to question witnesses at the staff level in a bipartisan way, they simply refused to participate.

None of them have said the obvious, which is that it is pretty odd that Dr. Ford's lawyers apparently didn't tell her that investigators volunteered to go to California to speak with her in private. It is downright strange that she didn't know she was being directed to Democratic lawyers and being sent off for polygraph examinations instead of being directed to the FBI or the Senate Judiciary Committee's professional staff.

Our colleagues across the aisle have never questioned that their allies' motives were anything less than perfectly righteous or pointed out the political convenience of any of this--that their assault on one man's integrity is convenient; in other words, that this has been self- serving for our friends across the aisle who were already committed to oppose the nomination, no matter what. None of this makes it any less callous.

So now we have agreed and the White House and the FBI have agreed to conduct a supplemental background investigation, something that could have been done months ago. It should have been done. It will last no more than 1 week, but it could take less time too. It is up to the FBI to determine who they believe they should interview for the supplemental background investigation, limited to up to a week and based on current and credible accusations. Those are the criteria.

Our colleague from Delaware and others during the hearing suggested that this period of time was sufficient. Back when we were discussing what was going to happen at the markup on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination last Friday, every single one of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said: Just give the FBI 1 more week, and that is what is happening.

But it will not make any difference. They are not persuadable. They have already made up their minds.

But it would not surprise me if at the end of the week, they raise their voices, which they have already begun to do, and move the goalposts, change their tune, find some fault with the FBI's investigation or the length of time in which it was conducted. I wouldn't be surprised because that is the way they have conducted themselves since the President announced Judge Kavanaugh as the nominee--always finding reason to delay, asking for something, and if they are given it, well, that is not enough.

Though I did not think an additional or supplemental background investigation was necessary, I am not opposed to the supplemental FBI investigation. What we already know is that the three people who Dr. Ford said were present at the party have all given sworn statements under penalty of felony saying: I don't remember, or it didn't happen, not in my presence. They are already under oath and can be prosecuted if they are not telling the truth.

I am not quite sure what the FBI is supposed to ask them after that, if they said: It didn't happen, or I don't remember, or it didn't happen; I wasn't there.

I am not sure what else they can really investigate, but I ultimately believe that given the state of the record, I don't believe the FBI supplemental background investigation will significantly alter the situation we find ourselves in currently. That situation is this: If the allegations we discussed during last week's hearing remain uncorroborated and unproven, if they never came up in the context of six or other FBI background checks, if they have been explicitly denied time and again by the nominee, if alleged eyewitnesses have no recollection of them and/or say they didn't happen, if they conflict with the accounts of many, many women who knew the nominee to behave honorably in high school, college, and law school and as a professional, and countless more women who have known and interacted with Judge Kavanaugh since, if the timing seems calculated, unusual, and politically motivated, and if our Democratic colleagues chose not to act on this opportunity when it was much more appropriate than now for them to do so, then there is simply no reason why we should not move forward. The die is cast, and it has been cast for quite a while.

A number of our colleagues announced against President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court before he was even identified, and a dozen or so more shortly after he was identified, without the benefit of any of the hearings that the American people have been a party to.

Move forward we will, soon, because we simply cannot in the United States of America establish a precedent by which any nominee can be derailed by last-minute, unproven accusations. If we do, then why would anyone want to subject themselves to this process? Anybody and everybody who is nominated to a Senate-confirmed position would be subjected to this same precedent once set: guilty until you prove your innocence.

Well, I wasn't there at the time that this was alleged. Well, you still have to prove a negative. You say you weren't there, but you still have to prove your innocence.

That is the opposite of what the presumption of innocence calls for. That is the opposite of what due process of law calls for. That is the opposite of what our constitutional system demands in fairness to everybody involved.

If that precedent were set--which I pray it will not be set--the only ammunition the opposition would need to shoot down any figure at any time would be innuendo, speculation, suspicion, and nothing more. We can't let that happen. We are not going to allow that to happen, and we are not going to set that kind of precedent.

It always seems that it is never quite enough to satisfy our colleagues across the aisle, particularly when it comes to the war over judicial confirmations and now the Kavanaugh nomination. It is always more, more, and more: Set the goalposts, move the goalposts, and backtrack from what you have agreed

to, all in the interest of more delays, which provide more time for the unproven, uncorroborated smears on the character of the nominee and more pain and anguish for the family, who has to suffer along with the nominee and endure these malicious, false, and unproven allegations.

Where does it end? Well, it should end this week. The longer this goes on, you will find more attention seekers, more lawyers who want to see their name in lights or give media interviews and help their business, perhaps, I guess.

I think it is completely unfair that Judge Kavanaugh has been made into a pinata. Opponents to this nominee and the media are practically gleeful at taking another whack at him, completely oblivious to what they are putting this good man and his family and friends through.

I have always supported Judge Kavanaugh's nomination. I did when he was nominated to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and I do now because I know him to be an upstanding and well qualified individual.

I first met him back in the year 2000, as I mentioned, preparing for an argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, when I was Attorney General. I met Brett Kavanaugh because he was one of the best lawyers in Washington, DC, to help you get prepared to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

But it is not just my experience with Brett Kavanaugh. Everybody who has practiced with him has said that. Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State, who worked with him at the Bush White House, has said that. Other law professors and law clerks have said that. Hundreds of women who know him have said that. We know he has a brilliant legal mind, and we know his good work over the last 12 years on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Many cases where he has written the opinion of the court have been adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States, essentially, as the law of the land.

How do we know he will exercise the kind of care, temperament, and fairness that we would expect of a member of the U.S. Supreme Court? Because he already has for the last 12 years. He will judge those before him fairly and carefully.

Judge Kavanaugh belongs on the Nation's highest bench, and by the end of this week, it will be time to put him there. Enough is enough.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake) and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Heller).

Mr. President, as the world knows by now, yesterday we had another hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was necessary to do so because an allegation had been made by Dr. Christine Ford to the ranking member, our friend Senator Feinstein from California, dated July 30, but because Dr. Ford requested confidentiality and she wanted to remain anonymous, none of this was brought to anybody's attention until some time after the judge's original confirmation hearing occurred. The judge visited with 60-plus Members of the Senate, including the ranking member, and it was never mentioned to him. No questions were asked about it.

Contrary to her wishes, Dr. Ford was thrust into the national spotlight. She said she didn't agree to have her letter released to the press. She did not consent to having her identity revealed. She did not want to be part of what has turned into a three-ring circus. But, once there, when she asked to tell her story, we consented to doing that, and yesterday we heard from Dr. Ford as well as Judge Kavanaugh.

Judge Kavanaugh asked to be heard to clear his good name and speak directly to the American people, and he did so forcefully yesterday.

Now we have heard Dr. Ford's story, and we have heard Judge Kavanaugh's rebuttal. What we have learned is that there is no evidence to corroborate Dr. Ford's allegation. All of the people she said were there on the occasion in question said they have no memory of it or it didn't happen--no corroboration.

As we all watched Judge Kavanaugh defend his personal integrity in front of the Nation, we saw his righteous indignation. He choked back his tears and aimed his fury not at Dr. Ford--none of us did that--but, rather, at this unfair confirmation process, which, frankly, is an embarrassment to me and should be an embarrassment to the U.S. Senate. To take somebody who has requested confidentiality and leak that information to the press and then to thrust her into the national spotlight under these circumstances, I think, is an abuse of power. But having made that request, once she was in the spotlight, we felt it was very important to treat her respectfully and to listen to her story.

I told anybody who would listen that I wanted to treat Dr. Ford the same way I would expect that my mother or my sister or my daughters would be treated under similar circumstances. Conversely, I thought that we should treat Judge Kavanaugh fairly, too, just as we would our father, our brother, or our son. In other words, this is more than just about Dr. Ford; this is about Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh.

We heard the judge respond with quite a bit of righteous indignation, as I said, talking about his family having been exposed to the vilest sorts of threats, including his two young daughters. I know it was a hard pill for many of our Democratic colleagues to swallow to hear the truth of what this terrible process has resulted in, both for Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford, but too much was on the line for Judge Kavanaugh to withhold his defense of his good name. After all, his reputation is on the line, his family is on the line, and his family, including his wife and his two daughters, are all caught up in what must be a miserable experience.

Still, I am glad we held the hearing, and I am grateful to Rachel Mitchell for participating and asking her probing questions.

Some have questioned: Why would a Senator yield to a professional in the sexual abuse field to ask questions of Dr. Ford? Well, it was simply because we wanted to depoliticize that process and to treat Dr. Ford with respect and gently, recognizing that somehow, somewhere, she has been exposed to some terrible trauma. But it was important for Ms. Mitchell to ask questions and to get answers to those questions so we could do our job.

I appreciate Chairman Grassley for doing his best to keep order in running the committee efficiently, as much as that is possible. At the first hearing, after Senators would speak over each other and would endlessly make motions that were out of order--when one Senator said, ``I am breaking the confidentiality rules,'' I said, ``This seems like a hearing by mob rule,'' not with the kind of demeanor and civility that you would expect from the U.S. Senate. I think Chairman Grassley has done the best anybody could do under difficult circumstances.

As I said, this hearing was not easy for either Dr. Ford or for Judge Kavanaugh. It has been painful for everybody involved.

Thankfully, we are much closer to a resolution on this nomination. Today, there was a markup in the Judiciary Committee, and I am glad we were able to pass that nomination out of the committee to the Senate floor.

Some are saying that we are moving too fast. To them, I would say that it is pretty clear what the objective of the opponents of the nomination is. Their objective is delay, delay, delay. Some have said that their goal is to delay this confirmation past the midterm election, hope that the election turns out well for them, and essentially defeat the nomination and keep the Supreme Court vacancy open until President Trump leaves office.

First, there was the paper chase; they needed more documents or, perhaps, they said there were too many. But the question I always had is this: If you have already announced your opposition to the nominee, why do you need more information? Unless, of course, you are open to changing your mind--but it is clear that is not the game that they are engaging in here.

Now there are those who demand that the background investigation be opened into two new allegations that appeared following Dr. Ford's. Today, the majority leader and some of our colleagues have announced an agreement to extend the background investigation for up to another week for these witnesses to be interviewed by the FBI. But I would note that the most recent allegations are so absurd, are so fantastic that not even the New York Times would run a story about Judge Kavanaugh's time in college as reported by Ms. Ramirez. They worked hard to try to corroborate her story by interviewing dozens of potential witnesses. None of them would confirm or corroborate Ms. Ramirez's story, but they did find, as Ms. Ramirez was talking to one of those individuals who was interviewed, where she admitted that she may have misidentified Judge Kavanaugh. In other words, she admitted that she may have the wrong guy--not credible, not serious, but dangerous.

It is dangerous in the sense that some of our colleagues take the position that all you need to do is listen to an accusation, and that is enough to make up your mind. You don't need to listen to the other side. As Judge Kavanaugh said, in Dr. Ford's case, it didn't happen; he wasn't there. If you listen to just one side of the argument, I guess it does make making up your mind a lot easier because you don't actually have to think about it and you don't have to think about what a fair process is in order to decide whose arguments you believe or whether somebody has met the burden of showing evidence that their claim is actually true.

This has become so ridiculous that the newest claims made by a young woman named Julie Swetnick, who is represented by Stormy Daniels' lawyer, are riddled with holes. Why would a

woman continue to go to parties with high schoolers when she was in college, and why in the world would she go to not 1, not 2, but 10 of these alleged drug- and alcohol-infused parties where gang rape occurred? It is just outrageous--incredible.

We have encouraged all of these individuals, no matter how incredible the allegation may be, to work with the Judiciary Committee and submit to an interview with the bipartisan representation of the Judiciary Committee there. This is standard operating procedure for the Judiciary Committee. The basic background investigation is done by the FBI. But they are not investigating a crime; it is a background investigation in which they take notes on their conversations with witnesses. They don't tell you which witness to believe or what conclusions to draw from that. They send that to the Judiciary Committee, and the Judiciary Committee follows up with additional questions, if necessary. Lying to the FBI--just like lying to the committee--is actually a crime punishable by a felony, so both carry serious consequences and a serious warning to those who might try to lie their way into a background check.

What is so ridiculous about where we find ourselves is that in addition to Dr. Ford's confidential letter to the ranking member being released against her wishes and without her consent, contributing to this circus atmosphere as we continue to try to investigate some of these claims, the Democratic professional staff have been refusing to cooperate or participate, even as they continue to make more and more demands. It is clear that their appetite for delay is insatiable, and delay is their ultimate goal.

For those who continue to say that they want the FBI involved, I will tell them that the FBI has been and is involved. It has conducted its background investigations just as it did on the six previous occasions when Judge Kavanaugh was being vetted for other positions within the Federal Government. You heard that right: Judge Kavanaugh has been through six FBI background checks, and none of these matters have come up previously.

What we were doing yesterday with the hearing was part of our job, which is to continue the investigation. I think people have a very narrow idea of what an investigation entails. It is not just a background check by the FBI. It is the interviews by the professional staff on the Judiciary Committee, and those are the hearings like the one we had yesterday, all day, hearing from Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford. That is our job; that is our constitutional role, to provide advice and consent.

Plus, if our colleagues across the aisle were really interested in a background investigation of Dr. Ford's complaints in a confidential manner, as she requested, they could have requested that be done and the results reported to us in a closed setting. What happened to Dr. Ford is inexcusable. To have a Senator sit on this allegation and refuse to turn it in to the committee so it could be investigated in a confidential way that would have protected her anonymity and would have allowed the committee to question both Judge Kavanaugh and her--that didn't happen, by design, perhaps because the goal really wasn't about giving Judge Kavanaugh or Dr. Ford a fair hearing. It was about delaying this confirmation vote.

When Judge Kavanaugh was interviewed about a week or so ago and again yesterday, he talked about a fair process--in other words, hearing from both sides of an argument. But under our constitutional system, if you are accused of a crime--and, believe me, Judge Kavanaugh has been accused of multiple crimes--you are entitled to the presumption of innocence. In other words, there is a burden to come forward with evidence to justify and support an accusation, and if you don't do that, your accusation is not enough to meet that burden.

Usually what we have are corroborating witnesses--other people present at the time who can corroborate what the allegation is. But all of the witnesses who have been identified by Dr. Ford cannot corroborate or confirm her allegation. They say that they have no memory of that or it simply didn't happen.

Even the Bible talks about the importance of corroborating witnesses. I didn't find this, but I vaguely remembered it, and someone on my staff pointed out Deuteronomy 19:15:

One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any

crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be

established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

So this is a rule of ancient origin dating back to the Old Testament. That is what we are talking about today. When Dr. Ford comes with an accusation 35 or 36 years after the fact, and no one else can confirm her story, it is not enough to carry the day.

The other thing we need to be wary of is false choices. This is not a matter of he said, she said. Someone said this is a matter of he said, she said, they said: Dr. Ford said one thing; Judge Kavanaugh said another; the so-called corroborating witnesses said another. But what they said did not corroborate Dr. Ford's story. Just the contrary, they confirmed Judge Kavanaugh's denial of any participation in anything remotely like that which Dr. Ford alleges.

So after 36 years, as Ms. Mitchell was able to develop, we know, for perhaps obvious reasons, that Dr. Ford's account has some inconsistencies and some gaps regarding the timing, location, and details regarding these events. I think we need to listen to her. We need to take her story into account. As I said, I want to treat her the same way I would want my mother, sister, or daughters treated under similar circumstances. But we can't ignore the inconsistencies and the gap in her story and the fact that she has tried to tell it 36 years after the fact.

We also can't ignore the full-throated defense and the heartfelt denial of Judge Kavanaugh or the testimony that none of this is in the character of Judge Kavanaugh. We have heard that from people dating all the way back to 1982. Indeed, Ms. Mitchell--a professional prosecutor, prosecuting sex crimes in Arizona--told us last night that with her more than two decades of experience and the kind of case brought forward by Ms. Ford, she would not file those charges against a defendant because there simply is not enough evidence. In fact, the only witnesses identified by Dr. Ford denied the event actually occurred. As a matter of fact, she said that she couldn't even get a search warrant or arrest warrant in a case like this. If you can't identify the time or the place, you are not even going to be able to get a search warrant. You certainly can't show probable cause, which is required by law.

So here is where we are. If the allegations we discussed during yesterday's hearing remain uncorroborated and unproven, if it never came up in the context of six Federal background checks, if it has been explicitly denied by the nominee, if the three alleged eyewitnesses have no recollection of it or say that it didn't happen, if it conflicts with the account of some 65 women who knew the nominee to behave honorably in high school and countless more women who have known and interacted with Judge Kavanaugh since--the timing seems unusual, perhaps even politically motivated. And if our colleagues across the aisle chose not to act on this information once presented but rather to spring it on us and Judge Kavanaugh after the fact, there is no reason, in my mind, that we should not move forward with the nomination because we have seen what happens.

This is not just about Dr. Ford; it is about the subsequent allegations by Ms. Ramirez and additional allegations by Ms. Swetnick, each more salacious, each more incredible, and each more out of character with what we know about Brett Kavanaugh. And it is going to continue. The longer this nomination is unresolved, there are going to be more and more people coming out of the woodwork to make accusations that are uncorroborated and unprovable. You can imagine what this does to Judge Kavanaugh and his family as he is left hanging like a pinata, where people just come by and take another whack at him and his family.

We have to move forward. We can't establish a precedent by which a nominee can be derailed by a mere accusation that is unproven. We are never going to get good people to agree to serve in these important offices, and we can't allow the nomination process to be a drive-by character assassination that is unproven. The only ammunition our colleagues across the aisle

need in order to shoot down any figure at any time would be innuendo-- innuendo, speculation, suspicion, unproven allegations, nothing more. We are not going to let that happen. We are not going to establish that precedent. It would be bad for the Senate. It would be bad for the United States of America.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am glad Dr. Ford had a chance to have her say. We owed her that much. I know it took some courage, and it is a reminder to all Americans that victims can and should be heard. As I said, I myself have two daughters. We all have a mother. Some are fortunate to have sisters or a spouse. This can be a very personal matter to every one of us. Yet we all know that all of us have fathers, and many of us have brothers. Some have husbands and sons. In other words, my point is, if this kind of uncorroborated allegation would seem so manipulated in exploiting vulnerable people who made accusations like this and we tolerate that, I think it will forever poison the confirmation process and discourage good people from coming forward.

We must always be fair to both the victims and those who stand accused. It has to be a two-way street. I have supported Judge Kavanaugh's nomination because I have known him since the year 2000. In my experience, he has always been an upstanding and certainly he is an incredibly well-qualified individual.

We have heard everybody--from his fellow lawyers to his law clerks, to women he has worked with, to former Presidents of the United States--say that. We know he has an incredible record on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, where many of his decisions have been affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. I know he will judge fairly and carefully. I believe he belongs on the Nation's highest bench. In a few more days, after a few more delays, we will finally vote to put him there and say enough with the games.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan).

Mr. President, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I am looking forward to a hearing that we will have tomorrow at 10 o'clock in the morning, at the request of Dr. Ford, that will give all of us an opportunity to provide a fair chance to her and for her to have her say. It is important that we do this because, during the last 10 days, it has felt like a series of small earthquakes. Actions taken and blunders committed by our Democratic colleagues have destabilized the normal confirmation process and timeline.

All of this stems from the fact that the allegations made by Dr. Ford were made to the ranking member and kept by her from other members of the committee as well as from the background investigators, who, normally, when allegations come up like this, protect the confidentiality and anonymity of both the accuser and the accused until they can be properly vetted. Yet that all went by the wayside when our friend from California, Senator Feinstein, sat on this letter, this accusation. So we are where we are.

As a result of the unfairness to both the accuser and the accused because of the secrets the Democrats kept, because of the way these were leaked to the press and the pledges of confidentiality were violated, we know the nominee, Judge Kavanaugh, who has had six FBI background checks in the course of his professional career, has been subjected to multiple accusations that could and should have been brought up much earlier.

As I say, if it had been handled during the normal, conventional process, it would have protected Dr. Ford, and it would have protected the nominee from this circuslike atmosphere, and we could have gotten to the bottom of the allegation. We could have, hopefully, ascertained where the truth lies. Yet, under this approach, under this current situation--again, created by this failure to release the information so it could not be investigated until after the hearing--everybody loses. I think we all recognize the basic unfairness of this process both to Dr. Ford and to Judge Kavanaugh and that it did not have to be this way.

The process, as I say, has been patently unfair. That is why my colleagues and I have been insisting on a better way forward by returning to the process that is fair to all concerned. In the dictionary definition, ``fairness'' is defined as the ``quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable.'' Another definition is ``impartial and just treatment of behavior without favoritism or discrimination.''

How are we to handle this accusation and this challenging difference of position on Dr. Ford's part, who said this attempted sexual assault occurred 36 years ago, and Judge Kavanaugh, who has stated under oath that no such thing happened? How do we get to the bottom of this?

The biggest challenge we have is time because I defy any one of us to try to reconstruct what we were doing on a given day at a given time 35 or 36 years ago. It is just impossible to reconstruct with complete fidelity and accuracy.

What we really need to be thinking about, I believe, is a fair process. We have tried to provide a fair process for Dr. Ford, under these unfortunate circumstances, to tell her story, but we also need to provide a fair process for the nominee. This should not be a precedent for how future nominations will be handled. We should learn from this terrible experience and commit to doing better. One way to do better would be to return to our basic values and principles in our government and in our country, under our Constitution, which guarantee the rights of a person who is accused of a crime.

I know the minority leader--my friend from New York, Senator Schumer--has said to Judge Kavanaugh that this is not a court, that this is a nomination, which, I presume from that, means, well, anything goes and that there are no rules. He has been accused of a crime-- attempted sexual assault--and has testified under oath, under penalty of perjury, that no such thing happened. This is a very serious matter, and we need to take it seriously and not create a new framework out of thin air, which says, somehow, if somebody makes an accusation that cannot be corroborated by anybody else 36 years later, that that somehow satisfies our notions of due process and of protecting the rights of people who are accused of crimes.

Fundamentally, this is about fairness. People who have been accused of grave misconduct have a right to due process under our Constitution. They have a right to know who their accusers are as well as the nature of the charges being brought against them and the evidence that will be presented against them. Those are basic, constitutional, American rights that are consistent with our idea of what the government's burden should be when the government is trying to deny us our right to liberty or property or even to our lives.

We also know these rights include a right to speedy proceedings without unnecessary delays. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of delays for Judge Kavanaugh. Last week, we saw Chairman Grassley patiently wait and wait and wait some more while the legal team and political operatives who represent Dr. Ford strung the committee along. I am sure Judge

Kavanaugh was wondering: What in the heck is going on here?

As we all heard during a televised interview on Monday night, he, unequivocally, denies the claims that have been made against him. Again, that is a serious statement because he does so under penalty of perjury. He said: ``I know what is the truth, and the truth is I have never sexually assaulted anyone in high school or otherwise.'' Those are strong words and direct words, and they remind us of something important. It is the truth that the Judiciary Committee and the entire country should be after--the truth. But for the truth to be our goal this week, some of my colleagues need to dial down the rhetoric and quit presuming guilt based on an accusation and nothing else.

At a minimum, a fair process requires a partial and open mind on the part of those charged with determining a person's professional fate. My fellow Senators need to remain open to receiving and evaluating credible evidence presented at the hearing. Unfortunately for our Democratic colleagues, that ship has sailed.

Long before Dr. Ford's allegations were leaked to the press and made public, contrary to her wishes, all of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle on the Senate Judiciary Committee had said that they would vote against this nomination, so Judge Kavanaugh hardly has an open and impartial tribunal deciding his professional fate and deciding whether this accusation will remain a stain on his professional career and reputation for the rest of his life.

Then, as I said, there is also the presumption of innocence. The Supreme Court has said: ``The law presumes that persons . . . are innocent until they are proven, by competent evidence, to be guilty.'' This is a fundamental bedrock of our constitutional system. It is nonnegotiable. It cannot be conveniently brushed away by our colleagues across the aisle. It is not one of several options; rather, it is guaranteed under our Constitution. The burden of proof is always on the party alleging wrongdoing, not the other way around.

We have the logical conundrum, as well, beyond the constitutional one, where Dr. Ford has testified--at least in the letter--to an event occurring. Judge Kavanaugh said it didn't happen. He said: I didn't do that; I wasn't there. So unless the burden is on the person making the accusation, how in the world could the person defending possibly prove a negative when he says that it didn't happen and he wasn't there? It is impossible. That would be a presumption of guilt, not a presumption of innocence. That would turn our Constitution on its head.

That is why it is so important for us to hear from Dr. Ford, to evaluate the strength of not just the allegations but what corroboration, what other evidence, there is in order to find the truth.

We have learned from media reports that attorneys for Dr. Ford have affidavits of additional people who know the accuser personally, but according to USA Today, these simply indicate that these are things that Dr. Ford told her friends 20 or 30 years later, not witnesses of the event that she claims occurred 35 or 36 years ago.

Let's also remember that three other eyewitnesses Ms. Ford identified have said that they have absolutely no recollection of the events that she says took place--none whatsoever. These are people Dr. Ford identified as witnesses to the assault that she claims Judge Kavanaugh perpetrated. Yet the witnesses she identified said that they have no knowledge of such an event.

We also need to remember the context in which all of this is occurring. Sixty-five women who went to high school with Judge Kavanaugh have written a letter saying that he has always behaved honorably toward them and treated them with respect. That doesn't mean Dr. Ford is not entitled to be heard--quite the contrary.

She has a story to tell. As the father of two daughters, I want to hear that story. I want to compare it to Judge Kavanaugh's unequivocal denial and judge for myself the reliability of each. As a former judge for 13 years and an attorney general for 4, I feel that doing anything less would be shirking my duty.

We owe Dr. Ford our time, our attention, and our best efforts at discerning the truth. That means her claims will be tested, examined, and new information, perhaps, will be brought to light. At least that is my hope. That is the way it should be.

We are trying to clean up the mess created by an unconventional process of leaking allegations to members of the press after the background test was completed and after the hearing occurred rather than handling it the way that, as I said, it should be. We should have started with that process, not end it here.

What the majority leader described yesterday as a disturbing pattern should never have taken place over the last few weeks. Our colleagues across the aisle, catching wind of an allegation, refused to share it with the majority and, instead, waited and then made sure that it was leaked to the press at the most politically opportune time, when it was likely to cause the maximum disruption and embarrassment to both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. That is no way for the U.S. Senate to do its business.

A search for the truth--if that, in fact, is what we are involved with, and I hope it is--should not involve delays and the withholding of documents. It should not involve orchestrated personal attacks on Members either. It should not involve a mob rule like what we saw at the first Kavanaugh hearing. It should not involve people sending coat hangers to offices or forcing committee members to leave restaurants, harassing them when they are trying to have dinner with their family.

People who hold a genuine concern for Dr. Ford would have honored requests for anonymity and privacy. That is what Dr. Ford specifically requested. They would have passed those allegations to the Judiciary Committee so that an investigation could have been conducted in a more timely and confidential fashion, and then they could be addressed during the hearing, if necessary, that we had earlier this month. That standard procedure would have treated Ms. Ford as a real person, not as a political pawn, and it would have left the Democratic operatives who have now been hired to dig up dirt out of the mix.

I want to say that throughout all of this, Chairman Grassley has been exceedingly generous toward Dr. Ford, as we would all want him to be, even when his patience has been tested. I want to commend him, once again, because he has had a very difficult job of trying to run the Judiciary Committee, trying to be fair to the nominee and the accuser alike when this wrench, thrown into the spokes of the committee operation, has created more of a circuslike atmosphere than a deliberative process and search for the truth, testing the background of a nominee, which is something all nominees deserve. No nominee deserves to be dragged through the mud like this.

Chairman Grassley has been patient because he knows how important this is and how much is on the line, not only for the Supreme Court but also for women across this country who see a little bit of themselves in Dr. Ford and want to make sure that their voices, like hers, are always heard.

Over the last year, we have been in the middle of an important national conversation on the topic of sexual assault and the way men have treated women. As I said, I have two daughters. As I mentioned earlier, every American has a mother. Some are lucky and have a sister or a spouse or a daughter, and I think all of us would want to make sure that all of those women in our lives would be treated with dignity and respect, were they in the same position that Dr. Ford now finds herself in.

Yet it is also important to remember that every person has a father. Many are fortunate to have brothers or sons or husbands, and we would want to make sure that all of those men are also treated fairly and with respect. We would no more rather have a women's truthful claim be ignored than an uncorroborated accusation against a man be honored. That is fairness.

As we know, Dr. Ford is a real person, and so is Judge Kavanaugh-- flesh and blood. Each of them should be treated with fairness, with dignity, and with respect. It is not just one or the other, which is the false choice that many of our colleagues have suggested. We can't pick one and dismiss the other outright and claim any fairness

or allegiance to our constitutional system and due process of law if we do otherwise.

As Michael Gerson, the columnist for the Washington Post, reminded us earlier this week, somewhere along the way this process devolved into one that is no longer about just winning arguments but about demonizing and destroying other people. It is not about winning arguments. It is not about winning elections. It is not about winning votes here in the Senate. This process has devolved into character assassination and destroying the reputation and lives of real people. It is not too late to change that.

This all calls to mind that famous line by Joseph Welch, a lawyer during the McCarthy hearings. He said: ``Have [we] no sense of decency . . . at long last?''

Well, I think we still do, and I hope Republicans and Democrats will prove we have a sense of decency and fairness as we approach Thursday's hearing.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I have 13 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining Safeguards for Consumer Data Privacy.''

Committee on Environment and Public Works

The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Cleaning up the Oceans: How to Reduce the Impact of Man-made Trash on the Environment, Wildlife, and Human Health?''

Committee on Finance

The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Impact of Tariffs on the U.S. Automotive Industry.''

Committee on Foreign Relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 11 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

Committee on Foreign Relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 11 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Francisco Luis Palmieri, of Connecticut, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Honduras, Department of State.

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on pending legislation and the nomination of Peter T. Gaynor to be Deputy Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Committee on Indian Affairs

The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

Committee on Indian Affairs

The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Justice for Native Youth. The GAO Report on `Native American Youth Involvement in Justice Systems and Information on Grants to Help Address Juvenile Delinquency.''

Committee on Rules and Administration

The Committee on Rules and Administration is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act.''

Committee on Veterans' Affairs

The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 3 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The State of the VA: A 60 day Report.''

Subcommittee on Cybersecurity

The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness

The Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Global Space Race: Ensuring the United States Remains the Leader in Space.''

Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management

The Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Federal Role in the Toxic PFAS Chemical Crisis.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor and talk for a few minutes about the unfortunate circumstances we find ourselves in as a result of the failure of the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee to submit a letter that she received from--in this case, we now know--Dr. Ford to the background investigators, who are bipartisan, who would have investigated this matter during the normal course of the confirmation process in a way that protected the anonymity and confidentiality of Dr. Ford, as well as the nominee.

As the Presiding Officer knows, having been a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, frequently during the course of a background investigation, we will learn things that Senators will want to ask the nominee about, but some of them are so sensitive and, frankly, some of them involve allegations we just don't know whether there is any basis to them or not. So they are handled in a particularly careful manner by the background investigators, and they are not generally made available to Members of the Judiciary Committee staff because they are so sensitive and potentially embarrassing. Frankly, we just have to get to the bottom of them, but we want to do so in a way that is respectful of both the person making the accusation as well as the nominee.

Unfortunately, none of that happened here because we now know that the ranking member, our friend Senator Feinstein, sat on this letter for some 6 weeks. Then, after the hearing, after all the thousand-plus questions for the record, after being able to examine not only the nominee for 2 days--over a long period of time--having gone through an FBI background investigation, as well as a bipartisan background investigation by the Judiciary Committee staff, this letter comes out in a way that, frankly, puts Dr. Ford in an uncomfortable position but also has consequences in terms of the nominee.

Many of us saw last night Judge Kavanaugh talk about the impact of this accusation that he denies ever occurring, its impact on his children, on his marriage, and on his reputation. This is not something any of us should welcome or take lightly, especially when there is an alternative, which would have protected Dr. Ford and the nominee and allowed us to get to the bottom of this accusation before it would ever have the potential of becoming public.

I just don't buy this idea either that if you are a man, you are on one side of this argument when it comes to accusations of sexual misconduct, or if you are a woman, you are on the other side. All of us have mothers. We all have fathers. Many of us have brothers and sisters. Many of us are fortunate enough to have daughters, as I do. I want to make sure my daughters, my wife, and my sister are treated with the dignity and respect that they are entitled to were they to be so unfortunate as to be caught up in a situation where they were a victim of sexual misconduct by a man. Conversely, this idea that just because you are a man, you are presumed to be guilty because somebody makes an accusation without presenting any evidence to support that accusation strikes me as being uniquely antithetical to our constitutional system and our sense of what is fair play. I will talk about that more in just a second.

I am very proud to support the nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, for the U.S. Supreme Court. I have had the fortune to know him since about 2000. He is an exceptional nominee by all respects. I, along with the majority leader and others, think it is a disservice to him, as well as to our courts, as well as to the Senate and the confirmation process for us to sit idly by and allow our colleagues across the aisle to blow up the normal process and to denigrate the reputation he has spent a career to build--especially, without solid evidence.

Again, we all feel sympathy--we should--for people who claim sexual assault. We owe them an opportunity for a fair chance to tell their story and to produce evidence, and we have recourse in our courts of law and elsewhere when those sorts of serious accusations are made.

But we also need to consider both sides of the equation. We need to consider the impact on the nominee--somebody who served more than 12 years as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and, before that, worked for the President of the United States in the White House Counsel's Office. His public service required him to go through not one FBI background check but six FBI background checks, and he passed all of them with flying colors. Never before in any of those six background checks has this accusation been lodged. Not once in his long career has there been any allegation of improper conduct on the part of Judge Kavanaugh toward women--not once--other than this allegation.

As I said, as we think about what a fair process is--and Judge Kavanaugh talked about that last night--we need a fair process. We need not to assume somebody is guilty because an allegation has been made.

Frankly, in the criminal law context, we wouldn't want to give the government that much power to be able to deny us of our liberty, our property, or even our life by just an accusation, without requiring credible evidence to be presented in order to prove it before an impartial jury or judge. This is a constitutional principle--a bedrock constitutional principle--of our form of government.

It is very disturbing, and it is dangerous to hear some of our colleagues try to turn that principle on its head and say it is up to Judge Kavanaugh to disprove the allegations. He said it never happened. How could he possibly disprove the allegation when he said it never happened?

Well, that just shows the extent to which I think we have gotten off track in this confirmation process. We have already heard an awful lot about the judge. By all accounts, he is well qualified, according to friends, mentors, law clerks, attorneys, and professors. Everybody who testified about his nomination considered him to be a man of integrity, and I believe that personally to be the fact.

So it ought to trouble all of us--notwithstanding this orderly, respectful process by which the Judiciary Committee conducts background investigations, including accusations like the one being made by Dr. Ford--when that emerges at the eleventh hour. It makes no sense in terms of what we know about the nominee. It doesn't fit the picture. When something is alleged that is so completely out of character for what we do know about the nominee, it ought to strain our credulity. I, unlike some of our colleagues across the aisle, do not believe we should rush to judgment and simply assume the worse.

Of course, the other attribute of a fair process would be an impartial judge or somebody who hasn't already made up their mind. We know that is not the case among our Democratic colleagues. The minority leader said he would do everything in his power to stop the nominee long before this accusation came up, and I believe none of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee would have supported the nominee even before they knew about this allegation.

That is not a fair process. They are not a neutral observer or an impartial arbiter of the facts. They are more than happy to embrace thinly sourced allegations--even character assassinations--based on shreds of evidence, if you can dignify it by calling it that.

But that is not an approach that I think we should support. It is certainly not an approach I can support. I don't think it is a process anybody in the Senate or any American should support. It is shortsighted. It is narrowly focused and wrong.

I once told a friend that when the facts no longer make a difference in an argument, I am going to look for a new line of work. But the facts do matter, and these are the facts. Right now, we have one primary allegation regarding Judge Kavanaugh, and then another one that just popped up in the last day or so that I will talk about in a moment. Americans are all too familiar now with the misconduct that one person claims occurred more than 35 years ago. It is really hard to reconstruct things that happened 35 years ago. I think we all know that from our common experience.

I wonder if anybody within the sound of my voice could answer me: What were you doing 35 years ago on a given day in a given month at a given time? Could you reconstruct, in your own memory, what you were doing at that time and on that date and where you were and who you were with?

We also have to bear in mind that Judge Kavanaugh has said that this alleged incident, simply, did not happen. He said so under penalty of felony. In other words, if you lie to the FBI or if you lie to Congress during the course of a background investigation or in testimony to Congress, that is subject to a criminal penalty. Now, because Dr. Ford didn't go through the normal background investigation, she has not had to give evidence to the committee or to the Congress under that same penalty of perjury. Judge Kavanaugh has, but she hasn't. Yet she will have that chance this Thursday.

I firmly believe that a fair process means that both the accuser and the accused should be required to provide information to the Congress-- to the Senate and to the Judiciary Committee--under the same conditions. In other words, if one witness testifies under oath, then both witnesses should testify under oath. If one witness is subject to a penalty of perjury for lying, then both witnesses should be subject to a penalty in the event of perjury for lying. That is another attribute of the fair process that Judge Kavanaugh talked about last night.

We can't ignore the fact that, so far, no one else has corroborated Dr. Ford's statements and that she herself concedes she told no one about this alleged incident, not even a friend or a family member, until 2012 and, only then, without mentioning Brett Kavanaugh's name. The Judiciary Committee's investigators, as you would want and expect, have already been in touch with the four other people who Dr. Ford claimed were involved in this incident, and all four have denied having any knowledge of this event. That is a fact. You can't ignore it. You shouldn't ignore it. That is something we ought to consider as part of a fair process.

Nevertheless, we have really done everything we possibly can. We have acceded to every reasonable demand that has been made by Dr. Ford and her lawyers to give her the opportunity to be heard. We welcome her testimony, and we will listen to her at the hearing that has been scheduled for this Thursday. We welcome her participation, but we insist on a fair process--a fair process to her and a fair process to the nominee--one that allows her and Judge Kavanaugh to testify: to explain, to justify, and to corroborate if they can. Again, one of the hallmarks of a fair process is the presumption of innocence. This presumption of guilt, based on an unproven accusation, is un-American. It is absolutely foreign to who we are as a country and the sort of process demanded under our Constitution for people who are accused of serious misconduct.

So far, this process has been patently unfair both to Dr. Ford and to Judge Kavanaugh because the ranking member sat on this letter for 6 weeks and didn't submit it through the regular background investigation process that would have protected Dr. Ford and her confidentiality while it was being pursued. Now, as a result of the way this was handled by the ranking member, her letter, which she requested to remain confidential, and her complaint, which she requested to remain anonymous, was leaked to the press, and a media firestorm ensued. I am confident this is not what Dr. Ford wanted when she sent that letter to our ranking member on the Judiciary Committee.

It is important that Dr. Ford be given the chance to talk about what she believes happened to her. We are in the middle of an important national conversation about sexual assault and how certain people in positions of power wield their influence to coerce and intimidate women in the workplace and at large. This is a long overdue conversation, but we can't let the pendulum swing so far as to deny the accused his or her basic rights.

The Judiciary Committee, as I said, is no stranger to these sorts of allegations as one of our own Members

stepped down during this Congress after he acknowledged his own misconduct. Yet, if, as Judge Kavanaugh says, the conduct in question never occurred, he shouldn't be used as some sort of sacrificial lamb on behalf of larger causes and concerns to which he is in no way attached or implicated. That would be unjust. That would be the opposite of fair. It would also establish a terrible precedent for nominees in moving forward. We can't and we shouldn't let that happen.

I believe Chairman Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has done an extraordinary job under very difficult circumstances. He has been extraordinarily gracious in trying to accommodate Dr. Ford. That is what we all have wanted even after her legal team has ignored offers and deadlines over the course of the last week.

I have to be honest, though. Some of the tactics that have been waged so far make me wonder whether Dr. Ford is still in control of her own story and her own circumstances. It makes me wonder whether she is being exploited by a political cause and whether her handlers and some of her supporters truly have her interests at heart. I wonder this particularly given that, after insisting this sensitive matter be treated confidentially, the letter--in the possession of our colleagues on the Democratic side on the Judiciary Committee--was leaked to the media, and Dr. Ford was forced to go forward publicly. Remember that the reason our friend, the ranking member from California, said she withheld this allegation until the very last minute was to protect Dr. Ford and to respect her request for anonymity. Yet that was then trampled on, ignored, and her wishes betrayed when this letter was leaked to the press.

Again, this is a particularly troubling matter, but one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle on the Judiciary Committee has gone so far as to suggest that Judge Kavanaugh doesn't deserve the presumption of innocence, that just because a 35-year-old allegation was made, we must presume he is guilty. She said she believes that not because of anything to do with his reputation for honesty or truthfulness or anything about the facts; she said it is because of the way he conducts his judging, the way he approaches cases.

This is an extraordinarily disturbing statement, and I think it should be to all of us--this idea that he is denied what is a constitutional right, when an accusation is made of a crime, because of the way he performs his job as a judge, deciding cases. That ought to disturb all of us. I hope our colleagues will approach Thursday's hearing with more open minds than, apparently, she will.

As I mentioned a moment ago, it is true that now there is a second allegation that has been reported against Judge Kavanaugh. It stems from the New Yorker article that was published a couple of days ago, but, obviously, it does not hold up to scrutiny. You don't have to take my word for it. Just ask the New York Times. The New York Times looked into it and conducted dozens of interviews. It tried to find anybody who would corroborate this allegation, and it wouldn't touch it because it couldn't get anybody else to say: Yes, that is what happened.

One journalist said on the air that Democrats sought out this second woman and essentially convinced her to make an accusation against Judge Kavanaugh. According to the story, no one the accuser knows has corroborated her claim. That is why the New York Times wouldn't report it. They interviewed several dozen people. They looked really hard. You can imagine how hard those reporters looked to find somebody--anybody-- who would corroborate this allegation, but they couldn't find anybody. What they found was that the accuser herself reportedly told others that she was not sure if the perpetrator was actually Judge Kavanaugh. She told others with whom she was talking about possibly corroborating her accusation that she was not sure it was Judge Kavanaugh.

Now this information has been distributed to the press and around the country in a way that really is extraordinarily shameful. I don't say this often, but good for the New York Times. Thanks for upholding a modicum of journalistic integrity by not reporting this uncorroborated allegation in which the person who was making the accusation said: I may have the wrong guy. Shame on the New Yorker and others who have published this junk journalism.

As he said, Judge Kavanaugh is not going away. Despite the allegations made against him, which he says are false and did not happen, despite the smear campaign on his reputation as a person of integrity, despite the threats made against him and his family, he said he will not be intimidated into withdrawing, and he vowed to defend both his integrity and his good name before the Judiciary Committee this week.

As the delay tactics continue to play out and as the news stories continue to pile up, let's not lose sight as to why Judge Kavanaugh was nominated in the first place--his qualifications and the respect that he enjoys from all of those who have interacted with him professionally and personally. His work has been praised by legal practitioners and scholars alike. He has been unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court on numerous occasions. During his grueling week-long confirmation hearing, he showed the kind of poise and seriousness befitting of the high office to which he has been nominated. He fielded many, many questions from Republicans and Democrats, and he responded to all of them truthfully, articulately, and graciously.

While it is easy to be distracted by the latest irresponsible, unsubstantiated allegation, we need to put that in a larger context. Surely, these allegations cannot be viewed in isolation nor can the fact that our colleagues across the aisle previously questioned Amy Coney Barrett for her Catholic faith. Judge Kavanaugh is a practicing Catholic as well. Amy Coney Barrett, who had been nominated for the Seventh Circuit, was actually told in the questioning of her Catholic faith that the dogma lived loudly within her, which suggested somehow that because she is a practicing Catholic, she could not be confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

We don't have religious tests in this country. No matter what your faith or background or absence of faith in a higher being, we should not be attacking nominees for their religions or their faiths or their lack of faith. We should be confirming good nominees who can apply the law and the Constitution as written. Yet I think it is important to put the Amy Coney Barrett questioning and statement in this context, given the background and faith of this nominee.

We will try our best to get to the truth this week. We will listen carefully, but we will remember all of the evidence, and then we will vote on whether to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Our Democratic colleagues have dragged this out long enough. There will be no more delays, and soon it will be the time to vote. I say to my friends, we will hear from Dr. Ford. We have done our best to accommodate her and to give her a safe place where she can tell her story under oath to members of the Judiciary Committee who will be voting on this nomination. Likewise, Judge Kavanaugh will be placed under oath and give his testimony. Both of them will be subject to the penalties for perjury, which is a routine requirement for everyone giving testimony. We have to remember this has to be a fair process, both to the accused and the accuser.

Some of the rhetoric, some of the statements I have heard about the process have been anything other than fair to either one of them, thanks to the fact that this letter was not disclosed earlier but then dropped into the public view, notwithstanding the reluctance of Dr. Ford to have her identity revealed.

So we are where we are. We have a job to do. Under the Constitution, it is the Senate's responsibility to provide advice and consent on nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, and we are going to do that. We are going to do that after hearing from Dr. Ford and after hearing from Judge Kavanaugh, just as we have heard for days from Judge Kavanaugh and other nominees following an extensive FBI background investigation and investigation by the bipartisan professional staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We are going to know everything that can be known about the nominee and about this alleged incident that Judge

Kavanaugh said never occurred 35-plus years ago.

I can't tell you where I was on any given day of the week 35 years ago at a certain time of day. That is why our job is so difficult, but we are going to do our very best, in fairness to Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, to try to bring this matter to a fair conclusion.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Corker), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul), and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse).