Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) said Thursday his Democratic colleagues are on a "fishing trip" for a scandal that could derail Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.
Hatch, the Senate president pro tempore and a member of the Judiciary Committee, took to the Senate floor where he mocked Democrats' hyperbolic rhetoric regarding Kavanaugh and the attacks on his personal life.
"Consider the damning evidence already uncovered in these documents: Judge Kavanaugh goes to church on Sunday morning, he appreciates pizza when he’s working late, he thought the last play of a Redskins game was ‘a total disgrace,’" Hatch said. "Mdm. President, if these mundanities aren’t grounds for disqualification, then what is? What more do we have to learn about Judge Kavanaugh before we can see him for what he truly is: Joseph Stalin without the mustache or as one of my colleagues so calmly put it, a man who will ‘pave the pave to tyranny.’"
The senator channeled Democrats in facetiously suggesting Kavanaugh's "vanilla ice cream cone" persona may be the greatest ruse.
"If I could tell the American people one thing today, it would be this: Judge Kavanaugh may seem like the human incarnation of a vanilla ice cream cone. But he’s actually something far more sinister," Hatch said. "Judging by the rhetoric coming from the left, I’m convinced that this minivan-driving carpool dad is actually the second coming of Genghis Khan?"
Hatch then called for Democrats to end their "fishing trip" and said the search for scandal was looking continually more desperate.
"Mme. President, it’s time Democrats come home from their fishing trip. We could spend eons angling for scandal in the river of documents the Judiciary Committee has provided us," Hatch said. "But nothing will bite because there’s nothing there. Democrats know this by now, and it’s time they admit it to the American people. The longer they wait, the more desperate they look."
A record number of documents and published judicial opinions related to Kavanaugh's work have been turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Democrats remain unsatisfied and many have refused to meet with the nominee. Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) announced confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh will begin on Sept. 4.