The Final Vote to Confirm Kavanaugh Will Be Delayed. Maybe.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have voted to advance Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to a full Senate vote, but Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) says he won't vote to confirm Kavanaugh unless the vote is delayed for a week to allow the FBI to reopen their background check investigation of Kavanaugh.

Jeff Flake alone can't force Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to delay the vote, but Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) says she is standing with Flake.

From the Associated Press:

After huddling privately with his colleagues, Flake announced that he would vote to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate only if the FBI were to investigate the allegations against the judge. Democrats have been calling for such an investigation, though Republicans and the White House have insisted it’s unnecessary.

Flake said that after discussing the matter with fellow senators, he felt it “would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to but not more than one week.”

If Flake and Murkowski (and possibly one or two others) stand by their word and force a delay in the final vote, that doesn't necessarily mean Kavanaugh won't be confirmed in the end. It also remains to be seen if they will stand by their word and I for one am skeptical.

It's also possible Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will ignore their threats and proceed with a final vote on Monday.

Regardless of how this turns out, none of this would be happening right now if these two women had not personally confronted Flake this morning.

The Daily Beast spoke to one of the women who confronted Flake.

Maria Gallagher, 23, had come to the Hart Senate office building on Friday morning to protest the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And as part of her responsibilities, she’d been tasked with camping out outside of Sen. Jeff Flake’s office to somehow, someway, persuade him to vote no. [...]

She had never expected to relay the most emotional moment of her life to a United States senator. She had never actually told anyone before. It had just come out, right there, in front of everyone, soon to be broadcast on national TV.

Her mother had called her after seeing it on cable. Even she had not known. Gallagher needed to step outside to go and talk to her about it. “This won’t be an easy conversation,” she said.