Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I would like to summarize. The Presiding Officer and I have had a front row seat in this process. We both serve on the Judiciary Committee.

I think oftentimes people come to the floor, and they want to just give the American public a little slice of what is going on that benefits their narrative rather than stepping back and thinking about what has happened since early July when Judge Kavanaugh was nominated to be on the Supreme Court. That happened on July 9.

Before July 9, there were many people on the other side of the aisle who had already announced their opposition not to Judge Kavanaugh but to anyone whom President Trump would nominate. We know who they are. They are very well publicized. I understand that. As a Member of the Democratic conference, I wouldn't deny them their right to do that. They oppose the President and anything he stands for.

Then, on July 10, there was a press conference, now that we knew who the nominee was, and a majority of the Democratic Members also said they opposed him. As a matter of fact, the minority leader said he would fight the nomination with everything he has, and he has, but there are some pieces to the mechanics that I think are important for people to understand.

Briefly, after Judge Kavanaugh was nominated, the chair and the ranking member got together, and they tried to come up with a framework for releasing as many documents as possible. In fact, that went on for 2 or 3 weeks. In fact, the documents some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said the Republicans refused to produce were going to be made available on a very focused basis but with what they call search terms--the way to get into those 100,000 secret documents they are talking about. We estimate that if our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would have done what they have traditionally done--that is, come up with an agreement on document production--they would have gained a lot of insights into the documents we considered relevant but not necessarily the documents they would like to use to create another political narrative, but they refused to cooperate, and we moved forward. As a matter of fact, we moved forward and provided more documents for this Supreme Court nominee than the total number of documents provided for all, in total, of the last three or four Supreme Court nominees.

We also went on to question--they call it questions for the record. What that means is that any member on the committee is entitled to compel the nominee to answer questions after the hearing. Judge Kavanaugh was subjected to over 1,200 questions for the record, under oath, that he had to submit back to the committee members. Those questions for the record are a multiple of any one nominee in the past; and, in fact, I understand it is probably the sum total of questions for the record that all the nominees on the bench were subjected to.

So the questions were asked. The documents were presented. All of that document production was going on in the latter part of July and August; the first tranche of documents came in about the second week of August.

What else was going on in the latter part of July and August? A letter, which was first submitted to a Congresswoman from California, was then routed to the ranking member, the senior Senator from California, at the end of July--a document that was expected to be held in confidence. It is a document we now know was authored by Dr. Ford, provided to the Judiciary Committee, with the understanding that her name would not become public.

In the past, the chair and the ranking member have a great relationship. They have a trusting relationship. In the past, when you had something you thought was material to the consideration of a nominee, a ranking member and a chair would try to figure out how to actually assess that information to treat the person in question--in this case, Dr. Ford--fairly and to hold her information in confidence. That didn't happen here. Actually, there was no communication with the chair by the ranking member.

A few weeks into it, we do know there was some consultation from what Dr. Ford says was a committee staffer to retain an attorney who has a very well-publicized reputation for being partisan. I don't have any problem with that because we have partisan attorneys on both sides of the aisle, but at the recommendation of the committee staff, which is what Dr. Ford said under oath, they retained an attorney who is working pro bono.

Now, I am really wondering whether some--not all but some--of the people on the other side of the aisle genuinely cared about what I believe is a traumatic experience in Dr. Ford's life, genuinely care about trying to go through a process that would provide Dr. Ford with some closure because if they had, maybe they would have gotten someone who could interview her in the way that people experienced with sex crimes interview persons who have experienced a traumatic event. These attorneys who were retained didn't do that. Maybe, when the attorneys she retained, who are pro bono attorneys--that means they are not being paid, they are doing it at no cost or at least no cost to Dr. Ford--if the attorneys really cared about Dr. Ford versus the outcome, maybe they should have recommended to Dr. Ford to have the hearing, but that didn't happen either.

Now we move further through, and at the hearing--we had 32 hours of hearings. The letter was known to the ranking member. I don't believe it was known to any other member on the committee--32 hours of hearings. Each one of us had two rounds, virtually an hour to ask questions of Judge Kavanaugh, not even an abstracted series of questions protecting the identity of Dr. Ford but questions that could have potentially raised the issues we now saw after the hearing. Thirty-two hours of hearings, nothing mentioned. An hour and a half private hearing that, unfortunately, Senator Feinstein, for whatever reason, wasn't able to attend, never brought up. After the hearing, then we heard about these allegations.

Now, I have had some people on the other side of the aisle say we rushed the committee process. The fact is, it was delayed for 2 weeks after we found out about the allegation; 1 week was to get to a point to where we could accommodate Dr. Ford and have her come and testify before the committee. Chairman Grassley was criticized by some of the folks on my side of the aisle because they said he shouldn't be accommodating, delaying; set a deadline and moving forward. He didn't. He spent the weekend trying to figure out a setting, a method, that Dr. Ford would be comfortable with.

Let me back up a week earlier. A week earlier, the chairman and the committee offered to Dr. Ford to go to California to interview her outside of the lights, outside of the circus that sometimes occurs here, and have the attorneys present during the interview. In the hearing we had with Dr. Ford, the question was asked: Were you aware that the committee offered to come to California in a confidential setting and allow you to give your testimony? Her response to that question was: I did not understand that. So that really raises a lot of doubts in my mind about either the competence or the agenda of her counsel.

So now, at this point, I believe there are two sets of people who are opposed to Judge Kavanaugh's nomination. There are some who just genuinely disagree with his judicial philosophy. I actually vote for some judges when I disagree with their judicial philosophy. There are some on the agenda that I will again, but I am going to vote for them-- and I am going to get criticized by people on the right side of the aisle--because they are considered unanimously ``well qualified'' and just because I don't like the way they rule in certain cases, that is not enough reason to vote against them, but maybe for people on the other side of the aisle there is.

Then there is another group of people over there who I genuinely believe have used witnesses, have used this process, to just advance a political message and a political agenda.

Another reason I believe that is how the narrative changes depending on what sticks. We have received the additional background investigation. I should mention Judge Kavanaugh has had seven background investigations over the last 25 years. I saw a stack of documents in a secure facility that is about that thick; I would estimate 600 to 1,000 pages of prior Federal FBI background investigations to clear him for other roles he has had, as well as in this case. Over 25 years talking to 150 people, some as recently as about 10 years, or less than 10 years after he was in college, and not a whiff of any of the allegations we have seen put forward--not a single note.

So as more information comes up, we see the narrative going from the weight of the allegations--because, honestly, in every instance where an accuser has made an allegation and said these people were present, those people have been interviewed if they were willing to, and none of them have corroborated the allegations that were made--none. In the followup investigation, it even further undermined the sort of inference you draw when somebody says: Yes, these people were there. Check with them. We went back and checked with them, and it further undermined the veracity of the allegations that were made.

Now it looks like the narrative on the allegations is beginning to wane, so now the new narrative--and this is the last I will be talking about--is that, well, even if the allegations are untrue, the way Judge Kavanaugh behaved in the hearing--he was angry--raises a question about his judicial temperament.

Ladies and gentlemen, first, the American Bar Association has voted Judge Kavanaugh unanimously ``well qualified'' twice. In at least the most recent rating, they even spoke specifically to his temperament on the bench. I saw his temperament during the hearing for 32 hours. He sat in that chair in some cases for 2 or 3 hours without getting up and was patient when some unfair questions were being asked. He was cut off repeatedly, and he maintained his composure. He did well in about 31, 32 hours' worth of testimony.

Last week, I didn't see Judge Kavanaugh in the hearing; I saw Brett Kavanaugh. I saw a father, I saw a husband, I saw a son who was defending his honor. I saw somebody dragged through the mud without a single allegation with any corroborating testimony defending himself as a human being, and he did well for about 2 hours.

One final note. I firmly believe that Judge Kavanaugh is going to go to the Bench, and I firmly believe that because of his independence, he is going to make some rulings that I am not going to like, but he is going to do it for the right reasons.

What he is going to say is ``Instead of treating us like a nine- member legislature, go do your job, Congress. Change the law if you want me to have a different opinion'' when it comes to the Court. We should now be in that light, thinking about how we work together on a bipartisan basis to change things that we don't like, not expecting a nine-member legislature to do our job.

This has been a very difficult process. I know it has been extraordinarily difficult for the Kavanaugh family and for Dr. Ford. I pray for Dr. Ford's peace. I hope she finds closure. I hope there is some way she will be able to reexamine the facts of that summer in 1982 or 1983 and identify precisely what happened, precisely who can corroborate it, and have someone held accountable for that act. But I don't believe by any stretch of the imagination, based on the information presented to us, that that is Judge Brett Kavanaugh. For that reason, I will be voting no tomorrow--I will not be voting no tomorrow; I will be voting yes tomorrow.

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