Republican Sen. Jeff Flake admitted in an interview with “60 Minutes” that the FBI investigation – the one he called for – into the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh will probably do nothing to clarify what we already know.
“What are the chances that we are going to be in exactly the same place a week from now?” Scott Pelley asked Flake.
Flake responded that there is a strong chance that nothing will change.
“There’s a chance and we knew that. And some of our colleagues said that, ‘We’ll be back here one week from now. It’ll be worse,'” Flake said. “There will be other outrageous allegations that come forward, the FBI will talk to people who don’t want to talk anymore. We won’t be any better off. There is a chance that that will happen. I do think that we can make progress.”
Sitting next to Flake was none other than his longtime friend, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), who said that things will be different in a week.
“I think we will be in a different place,” Coons said. “Because lots of survivors around the country will feel that Dr. Ford’s story was heard and respected and further investigated. We may well be in a different place a week from now because Judge Kavanaugh and his family may well have had exculpatory evidence brought forward.”
Following the gut-wrenching testimonies from both Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh last Thursday, Sen. Flake announced he would be voting “Yes” on Kavanaugh only to qualify his position by calling for a week-long delay on the Senate floor vote in the name of repairing the divided country. Being that Flake is an outgoing senator, he admitted to Pelley that he would not have done it if here were running for re-election:
Scott Pelley: Senator Flake, you’ve announced that you’re not running for re-election and I wonder, could you have done this, if you were running for re-election?
Sen. Jeff Flake: No, not a chance
Scott Pelley: Not a chance?
Sen. Jeff Flake: No, no.
Scott Pelley: Because politics has become too sharp, too partisan?
Sen. Jeff Flake: There’s no value to reaching across the aisle. There’s no currency for that anymore. There’s no incentive.