It is all-but assured that Brett Kavanaugh will take a seat on the US Supreme Court, after the controversial judge received the backing of two key senators overnight.
In a speech that was disrupted by protesters, Republican senator Susan Collins, of Maine, announced that she would vote in support of Kavanaugh.
Collins said that she does not believe that the sexual assault allegations leveled against him could “fairly prevent” him from serving on the country’s highest court. She continued:
“The facts presented do not mean that Professor Ford was not sexually assaulted that night or at some other time but they do lead me to conclude that the allegations failed to meet the more likely than not standard.”
Minutes after her announcement, Democrat senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, also indicted his support for the controversial Supreme Court pick.
Manchin said he found Brett Kavanaugh to be a “qualified jurist who will follow the constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him”.
A final vote on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination will be held on Saturday, US time, but Friday’s 51-49 “cloture” vote indicates that he now has the necessary support from the Senate.
That said, it remains unclear whether he has the support to win the final vote, as some senators who voted to advance him may still theoretically vote against his final confirmation.
In an op-ed piece published yesterday, Kavanaugh himself attempted to apologise for his angry and stand-offish demeanour during his confirmation hearing.
“I said a few things I should not have said,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal piece, before going on to insist that Americans can “count on” him.
His confirmation, if it goes ahead over the weekend, will tilt the nine-member Supreme Court bench in favour of conservative judges.
