Senate Republicans won a key vote Friday to advance embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to his final confirmation vote.
The majority-republican Senate voted 51-49 to end debate on Kavanaugh, setting him up for his final hurdle on his path to the high court.
But the chips did not fall entirely along party lines. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a key swing vote who has kept her decision on Kavanaugh under wraps, voted against the cloture motion.
On the Democratic side, red-state Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted for the motion.
The procedural vote was scheduled a day after senators viewed a non-public FBI report on allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh.
The supplemental probe of the high court nominee — his seventh in total — was ordered last week by President Donald Trump after Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said it would be "proper" to allow up to seven days for the feds to look into some of the claims against Kavanaugh.
Republicans touted the FBI's final report, which they said showed "no hint" of misconduct by Kavanaugh. But Democrats and opponents of Kavanaugh called foul, suggesting Trump's "limited in scope" order was insufficient.
While Kavanaugh, a conservative appellate judge and former member of the Federalist Society, faced heated opposition from Democrats as soon as he was picked by Trump, he was expected to face few obstacles in Congress on the way to the high court bench.
But both his candidacy and his reputation were jeopardized in mid-September, after a letter surfaced from psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford alleging that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when the two were teenagers.
Ford, now 51, said an intoxicated Kavanaugh held her on a bed, covered her mouth with hand and tried to take her clothes off.
Kavanaugh, 53, categorically denied the allegations against him. In defiant testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Kavanaugh said "I've never sexually assaulted anybody."
His testimony, however, opened him up to questions about his impartiality and temperament, as his opening statement included partisan attacks against Democrats. In an attempt to quell these concerns, he defended his testimony in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Yet he also wrote that he "might have been too emotional at times," and acknowledged that his "tone was sharp."
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