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Rosen says GOP Heller’s support of Kavanaugh probe “charade”
“I am supportive of the administration’s decision to request a supplemental FBI background investigation,” to be completed in a week, Heller said in a statement Friday.
LAS VEGAS — Democratic Senate candidate Jacky Rosen in Nevada said Saturday that Republican Sen. Dean Heller’s support for an FBI probe of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, while also continuing to support his confirmation, is a “charade.”
“He’s made his mind up before he’s seen anything,” Rosen, a first-term House member challenging Heller in November, told The Associated Press Saturday. “That’s the charade of all this, isn’t it. That’s the charade.”
Heller, viewed the Republicans’ most vulnerable senator seeking re-election this year, said Friday he supported Trump’s request for a supplemental FBI investigation of Kavanaugh.
“I am supportive of the administration’s decision to request a supplemental FBI background investigation,” to be completed in a week, Heller said in a statement Friday.
But he added, “it is my hope that after this additional week, other senators will come to the conclusion that I have reached and support Judge Kavanaugh.”
Senate leaders agreed Friday to delay a final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to allow a one-week FBI investigation of allegations of sexual assault against him when the federal court judge was in high school and college.
President Trump ordered the FBI to reopen Kavanaugh’s background investigation after Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona joined minority Democrats on the judiciary committee in seeking the bureau’s involvement before the entire Senate would vote on Kavanagh’s confirmation.
Heller aides did not immediately respond about whether he would vote against confirmation if the FBI investigation found evidence of sexual misconduct.
During the campaign, Rosen has hounded Heller as first having been reluctant to support Trump, but then currying favour with the president to help his political fortunes.
Likewise, she has noted Heller’s opposition last year to a measure that would have repealed the 2010 federal health care law but, after a veiled threat from Trump and a challenge to his re-election from within his own party, helping author a bill that would have dismantled the Obama-era measure.
Heller is the only Republican seeking re-election in a state Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
Trump campaigned in Las Vegas for Heller on Sept. 20, saying “Your incredible senator, Dean Heller, is going to be with us all the time.”
