Brett Kavanaugh

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on a completely different matter, for anybody who has been reading the news over the past few days, it has probably felt a little like Groundhog Day because over the last couple of days, leading Democrats have tried to grab on to yet another poorly sourced, thinly reported, unsubstantiated allegation against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There they go again. Call it a 1-year anniversary reenactment with Senate Democrats reopening the sad and embarrassing chapter they wrote last September.

The latest allegation was blasted out by a major newspaper despite the apparent lack of any corroborating evidence whatsoever. The reporting was so thin that the story ran not in the news section but on the opinion page. In fact, they have already had to issue an enormous correction. The writers conveniently failed to note that the supposed victim herself declined to be interviewed, and several of her friends say she has no memory of any such thing happening.

We all remember this pattern from the last time around: Shoot first, and correct the facts later. Here is another familiar pattern: Just like last September, little things like facts and evidence didn't stop the Democrats from rushing to exploit this. Even as the media was trying to backpedal, a number of the Democratic Presidential candidates were hysterically calling for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached on the basis of this flimsy, uncorroborated story. They were calling for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached. That includes several of our own Senate colleagues. Even after the massive correction, no one in that group has backed off his ridiculous threat.

This laughable suggestion is already earning scorn throughout the country and across the political spectrum. A majority of Senators and the American people rightly rejected the politics of unsubstantiated personal destruction just last year. It is just as transparent and self-serving today, 1 year later.

Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss this as a bad case of sour grapes. This is not just a leftwing obsession with one man; it is part of a deliberate effort to attack judicial independence. Six of the Democratic Presidential candidates--plus one who has now quit to run for the Senate--have publicly flirted with packing the Supreme Court-- Court packing. Today's bold, new Democratic idea is a failed power grab from back in the 1930s.

Just a few weeks ago, some Senate Democrats nakedly threatened the Supreme Court Justices in writing. Our colleagues sent the Court an outlandish brief, gravely intoning that the ``Supreme Court is not well,'' they said. ``The Supreme Court is not well.'' Here was the punch line: Either issue rulings we like or we will pack the Court.

This is not normal political behavior. These are the actions of a political party whose agenda is so alien to the Constitution that it feels threatened by fair and faithful judges.

This is what I would say: When the simple notion that judges should be faithful to the Constitution looks like an attack on your agenda, maybe it is your agenda that needs a makeover, not our independent judiciary. When you are this willing to launch unhinged personal attacks, you reveal a whole lot more about your own radicalism than about the men and women you target.

This is my commitment and the commitment of all of my Republican colleagues: As long as we remain in the Senate, we will fight to preserve our fair and independent judiciary.

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