Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the deeply misguided vote to move forward on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination has taken the Senate a step closer to a moment that will cause enormous pain for millions of Americans, particularly women and survivors of assault.

Some may say that the Senate is rolling back the clock on women in America by confirming Brett Kavanaugh. After seeing what has happened to the women who have spoken out and talking to women in Oregon, I question how much the clock ever ticked forward. Indeed, this process has shone a spotlight on the double standard women across this country face just so they will be believed.

On the other hand, Dr. Ford never wanted any of this. The way she has been treated by Republicans in the Senate and the President of the United States is inexcusable. In one of the most un-Presidential speeches I have ever seen or heard, the President belittled a survivor in front of a crowd of thousands.

Dr. Ford came to us as a citizen who was doing her civic duty to provide the Senate with crucial information about a nominee before us. She called the front desk of her Congressperson; she didn't run to the news media or the cable shows or try to sell a book. She volunteered to tell her story under oath. She recounted the details of her assault in 18 minutes of testimony that will not soon be forgotten. It was heartbreaking to watch. At times, it was just excruciating.

What did Dr. Ford get for her courage? She was put on trial by the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, who actually hired an experienced prosecutor to grill her. The questioning was clearly designed to tar Dr. Ford as a political pawn. It attempted to delegitimize the trauma caused by her assault. It attempted to paint her as a liar.

It was stunning how little of the questioning Republicans subjected her to was focused on what Brett Kavanaugh did on the night in question. It is clear now that the focus was on undermining Dr. Ford's story and destroying her credibility. But Dr. Ford's credibility held up. I have said that I can't imagine a more credible witness, nor can I imagine how difficult it must have been for her to relive that experience and maintain such extraordinary composure. What she did took unknowable strength. Her testimony, delivered under what amounted to prosecution, was unforgettable. She is trained in psychology. She was even forced to act as the expert witness in her own trial, diagnosing the lifelong effects of her own trauma. She explained to the committee how memories of traumatic events implant themselves on the brain.

At one point, she described what she remembered most about the assault by Mr. Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. She answered, delivering on her training, that ``indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter.''

I believe Dr. Ford when she says she was assaulted in that room in 1982. I believe Dr. Ford when she says that her attackers locked the door, a hand was pressed over her mouth, and she feared for her life. I believe her when she says she remembers them laughing.

For all the grueling prosecution the Republicans put Dr. Ford through, it is important to compare that to the treatment of Brett Kavanaugh. When it was Kavanaugh's turn to deliver testimony, he was seething. He was raging in a manner completely unbecoming a Federal judge. He behaved in a manner that directly contradicted what Brett Kavanaugh said in a widely publicized speech a judge should be all about. In his own words, Mr. Kavanaugh said judges need to keep their emotions in check, to be calm amidst the storm. Mr. Kavanaugh failed his own test--his own test--last week. He offered the most partisan testimony I can recall when he talked about the Clintons and said ``what goes around comes around.''

Imagine if a female nominee had snapped at a male Senator about his drinking habits. The President of the Senate is an experienced judge and prosecutor. I am telling you, if a female nominee had done that, game over right there--right there. There again, you have the double standard.

When a few questions posed by the Republican prosecutor actually got to relevant questions, the majority side of the committee told her to just take off.

For that to be the only hearing on these allegations I think is just plain disgraceful. The committee should not have moved on to the vote. The allegations brought forward demanded a robust investigation. Yet the Senate has ended up light-years away from that. What kind of investigation looks to settle matters and doesn't interview the accuser and the accused? That just doesn't pass the smell test.

This is not about tarnishing Brett Kavanaugh's reputation or digging up salacious details from his high school days. The accusations against Mr. Kavanaugh and the possibility of perjury--both of which he denies-- relate directly to his binge drinking and sexual behavior. That is why the FBI background check should have been a robust inquiry into those matters. It is clear now that didn't happen. You ask yourself, why not? It is hard to find an explanation other than the investigation was handcuffed to predetermine the outcome.

Dr. Ford has said publicly that the FBI didn't talk to her, and they didn't look at the therapy notes she offered to turn over. They didn't talk to Mr. Kavanaugh. They didn't talk to the dozens of individuals who Deborah Ramirez said could potentially corroborate her story. They closed the investigation a full day ahead of the arbitrary deadline, and it is not clear why.

Based on that, in my view, this investigation was a whitewash. It was not legitimate. It was the product of intense political meddling, in my view, by the Trump administration. That means, if Brett Kavanaugh's nomination is confirmed, there are going to be questions about his legitimacy looming large for years to come.

I believe Dr. Ford. I have heard the Presiding Officer discussing this this morning on television. I respectfully would say I know the Presiding Officer doesn't share my view. But I felt that Brett Kavanaugh's behavior before the Senate last week ought to be disqualifying on its own. If you compare what he said last week to what he wrote ought to be the requirements for how a judge behaves, there is a very large gap between what Brett Kavanaugh said ought to be expected of a judge's behavior and what we saw last week when he testified.

From the time his nomination was announced, Kavanaugh portrayed himself as a trustworthy individual who had the kind of levelheaded temperament Americans expect and deserve from members of the judiciary. My view was that appearance last week before the committee my colleague serves on was a textbook case of raw partisanship.

In his afternoon testimony last week, Brett Kavanaugh was disdainful and sarcastic toward the Democratic Senators who questioned him. Brett Kavanaugh responded to what he considered to be unsubstantiated allegations by making truly unsubstantiated allegations of his own. Without any evidence, he declared the credible accusations that had been brought forward a ``calculated and orchestrated political hit'' by the Democrats. He pushed these baseless, conspiratorial comments about how this was all just revenge for the Clintons. And in a tone that just struck me as dripping with menace, he just said: ``What goes around comes around.''

If you look last week at how he presented himself to the chairman of the Senate's committee, I think you have to ask yourself: How can anybody expect that Brett Kavanaugh would offer a fair hearing in a politically charged case?

My conclusion, based on what I have described, is pretty simple. You just do not get to behave the way Brett Kavanaugh behaved last week and get to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Finally, my concerns go further than the temper tantrum we saw last week. There is hard evidence that shows that Brett Kavanaugh lied repeatedly and on a variety of subjects. For example, just yesterday, there was new evidence in scores of emails that the nominee lied about his involvement in government wiretapping programs.

The Presiding Officer of the Senate has been very gracious over the years in talking to me about these issues. He knows I care deeply, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about government wiretapping programs. I am here this afternoon to say I am not alone. Millions of Americans care about this issue. As I have said in my conversations with the Presiding Officer of the Senate, security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. You can have both.

What these emails--scores of them yesterday--prove is there is new evidence that Brett Kavanaugh did not tell the truth about his involvement in government wiretapping programs. There is hard evidence that shows he lied about using stolen documents, hard evidence that shows he lied about his involvement in the confirmation process of certain Bush nominees, hard evidence about the statements made by the other individuals who were present at the party where Dr. Ford was assaulted, hard evidence the nominee lied about when he learned of the second set of allegations made against him. The nominee even lied about small stuff. When you can't trust somebody to tell the truth, they don't belong on the Supreme Court.

It is important, before I wrap this up, to take a hard look at what has happened to the Court over the last few years. In 2016, Senate Republicans blocked a mainstream nominee to the Court--an individual who many Republicans had praised extensively--extensively--in the past. They held a Supreme Court seat open for nearly a year until a Republican President picked someone to their liking.

In 2018, the Trump White House interfered with the vetting of a second nominee, hiding key information from the Senate and the American people.

The floor debate on this nomination is going to be cut off before all the questions about sexual misconduct can be answered and before the statements I have outlined here today--ones where there is hard evidence--can be examined for perjury. These actions by the Republicans and the Trump White House, in my view, are taking a sledgehammer to the public's trust in the Court as an institution.

The Court used to have a healthy separation from the partisan battles that take place here in the Congress. I heard my colleague talking about that this morning on television. That healthy separation doesn't exist today. I just say, we have a lot of heavy lifting to do in the U.S. Senate to revive the vision of the Supreme Court held by the Founding Fathers after what has happened.

I am going to close by going back to the question of whether anything has changed since 1991 and the tragedy of Professor Hill. When Professor Hill testified in 1991, she was dragged through the mud. She was called a scorned woman. Perhaps you can say it represents some measure of progress that Dr. Ford wasn't slandered and insulted in quite the same way. But I don't know how much that matters if this nominee is confirmed.

The language used during the debate might sound different, but the outcome is the same. The failure by my colleagues on the other side to step back, suspend the partisan warfare, and recognize the seriousness and legitimacy of this information, in my view, will go down over time as a historic disappointment.

This was never a smear campaign. It wasn't a political hit job. Dr. Ford came forward out of a sense of civic duty. She knew the sacrifice she faced, and she wondered to herself if it would really make a difference. Why suffer through annihilation if it will not matter, she asked. Over and over again, she told us she only wanted to be helpful. I have never seen a witness--like my colleague presiding today, I have seen a lot of witnesses. She was a textbook case of being courteous, always saying: What can I do to be helpful?

Senators ought to consider the dangerous signal being sent to survivors of assault and to young people across the country from this debate. Dr. Ford wasn't on trial; nonetheless, she was prosecuted by the majority party. She got smeared as a political pawn, a liar, belittled, with her accusations dismissed by many almost immediately.

I made notion of how, a few days ago, the President mocked Dr. Ford, mocked her in front of thousands. What a cruel and un-Presidential moment. If the mockery and dismissiveness are not bad enough--if they weren't bad enough, there is the return of the sickening old notion that boys will be boys, what happened in the bedroom was ``roughhousing,'' and what happened was just too long ago. Today, survivors from sea to shining sea are asking: How are we going to be heard? How will we find justice?

I fear many survivors are going to conclude that coming forward with their story is going to be pointless, and there is very little likelihood of justice--very little likelihood of justice. Even if you are strong, composed, and constantly courteous, it will not help.

On the other hand, the signal to boys is this: Even if you engage in violence against women and lie about your conduct, the power structure is going to step up and protect you. The Senate has to be better than this.

I hope Senators are going to recognize that it is time to take these horribly outdated attitudes towards women and sweep them out like the cobwebs from an abandoned theater stage and start over. It can begin by rejecting this nomination today.

I will be voting no.

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