Jeff Flake Gives Searing Senate Floor Speech: We Owe Kavanaugh and Accusers an Apology
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) made a powerful speech on the floor of the Senate Wednesday after a third accuser came forward to claim that Brett Kavanaugh participated in gang rapes while in high school, sending shockwaves through an already turbulent Supreme Court confirmation process.
Flake — a centrist Republican set to retire this year — railed against both sides of the aisle for the “toxic” atmosphere created around the allegations against Kavanaugh.
He admonished lawmakers on Capitol Hill for having “dehumanized” Kavanaugh and his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, stressing: “before this woman and this man are anything else, they are human beings.”
“These people are not props for us to make our political points,” he said. “Nor are they to be demolished like Anita Hill, as was said on conservative media the other night. Nor is one of them a proven sex criminal, as has been circulating on the left side of the internet.
“These are human beings with families and children, people who love them and people whom they love and live for,” he added.
The Arizona senator then said to Kavanaugh and Ford: “We owe you both a sincere apology. An apology is inadequate of course, but it’s a start.”
Flake stressed that he does not believe Ford is part of a “vast conspiracy to smear” Kavanaugh, nor that the judge is a “serial sexual predator.”
He went on to describe some of the harrowing death threats he has received since the process began, blaming the atmosphere on a “toxic” political climate. “We have tested the limits of how low we can go.”
The senator also scolded President Donald Trump for his tweet questioning why Ford did not go to police when she claimed she was assaulted, in 1982.
“How uninformed and uncaring do we have to be to say things like that, much less believe them?” he asked.
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
