I might have been too emotional at hearing, says Brett Kavanaugh
Meanwhile, some 302 people have been arrested as demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court and in Senate office buildings.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has acknowledged he “might have been too emotional” when testifying about sexual misconduct allegations as he made a bid to win over wavering Republican senators on the eve of a crucial vote to advance his confirmation.
The 53-year-old judge said in an op-ed that he knows his “tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said” during testimony last week to the Judiciary Committee. He forcefully denied the allegations.
“Going forward, you can count on me to be the same kind of judge and person I have been for my entire 28-year legal career: hardworking, even-keeled, open-minded, independent and dedicated to the Constitution and the public good,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Mr Kavanaugh’s column appeared aimed at winning over the three Republican senators who remain undecided.
He got an additional boost late on Thursday from President Donald Trump, who praised his nominee’s “incredible intellect” and scoffed at detractors during a campaign rally in Minnesota.
Mr Trump said the protesters and “their rage-fuelled resistance is starting to backfire at a level nobody has ever seen before.”
He was referring to polling that shows some improvement for Republicans heading into the midterm election.
Earlier on Thursday, a pair of undeclared Republican senators accepted a confidential new FBI report into sex-abuse allegations against Mr Kavanaugh as “thorough”, bolstering Republican hopes for confirmation as the Senate plunged toward showdown votes.
One of the senators hinted he was open to supporting Mr Kavanaugh as party leaders set a pivotal preliminary vote for 10.30am local time on Friday. If that succeeds, a final roll call was expected on Saturday.
Democrats complained that the investigation was shoddy, omitting interviews with numerous potential witnesses, and accused the White House of limiting the FBI’s leeway.
Those not interviewed in the reopened background investigation included Mr Kavanaugh himself and Christine Blasey Ford, who alleged he had molested her in a locked room at a 1982 high school gathering.
A week after a televised Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which Mr Kavanaugh and Ms Ford transfixed the nation, the Capitol campus remained a stew of tension as the election-season cliff-hanger neared its conclusion.
US Capitol Police said 302 were arrested — among them said to be comedian Amy Schumer, a distant relative of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“What we know for sure is the FBI report did not corroborate any of the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters about the document, which was sent to Congress overnight.
On the Senate floor, he witheringly called the accusations “uncorroborated mud”.
Earlier, Senator Jeff Flake, one of the publicly undecided Republicans, told reporters “we’ve seen no additional corroborating information” about the claims against the 53-year-old conservative jurist and said the investigation had been comprehensive.
A second undeclared Republican, Susan Collins, also expressed satisfaction with the probe, calling it “a very thorough investigation”.
She paid two visits to the off-limits room where the document was being displayed to politicians. She told reporters she would not announce her position until Friday.
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she was “still reviewing” her decision.
While Republican leaders were not saying they had nailed down the support needed, backing from two of those three would ensure Mr Kavanaugh’s confirmation because every other Republican was poised to back him.
Republicans have a narrow 51-49 Senate majority, and vice president Mike Pence will be available to cast a tie-breaking vote.
Underscoring the hardening partisan lines, one of the two undecided Democratic senators said she would oppose Mr Kavanaugh.
North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who faces a difficult re-election race next month, cited concerns about his “past conduct” and said she felt his heated attacks on Democrats during last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing raised questions about his “current temperament, honesty and impartiality”.
West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the other undeclared Democrat, spent time looking at the report and said he would resume reading it on Friday.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, said while her party had agreed to a week-long FBI probe with a finite scope, “We did not agree that the White House should tie the FBI’s hands.”
White House spokesman Raj Shah rebuffed Democrats’ complaints. He said the FBI reached out to 10 people and interviewed nine, including “several individuals at the request of the Senate, and had a series of follow-up interviews … following certain leads.”
Senators said the documents they examined totalled about 50 pages. Some said there were notes on interviews with nine people, though others said 10.
Committee chairman Chuck Grassley issued a statement around midnight that listed the 10 people interviewed by the FBI, although not all of them were named.
Six of the witnesses involved Ms Ford’s claims, including a lawyer for one of them, and four were related to Deborah Ramirez, who has claimed that Mr Kavanaugh exposed himself to her when both were Yale freshmen, which Mr Kavanaugh denies.
Mr Grassley said the FBI concluded “there is no collaboration of the allegations made by Dr Ford or Ms Ramirez.”
Mr Trump, who on Tuesday scornfully mocked Ms Ford’s Judiciary panel testimony, tweeted that Mr Kavanaugh’s “great life cannot be ruined by mean” and “despicable Democrats and totally uncorroborated allegations!”
