The US Senate girded Friday for a critical, too- close-to-call vote on moving ahead with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, as Republicans brushed aside complaints by Democrats that a new FBI probe of sexual assault allegations against him was rushed and incomplete.
A final vote could come Saturday on President Donald Trump's embattled candidate, who if approved would seal a conservative majority on the nine-seat court for decades.
It is not a done deal, however. Republicans hold a 51-49 majority in the chamber and three of their members are seen as undecided on Kavanaugh, as a confirmation process that has gripped the city and the nation and aggravated already deep political divisions reaches its climax with just weeks to go before mid-term elections.
Under new rules approved last year, 50 votes are needed for victory in Friday's procedural vote. It is on ending debate on the confirmation and moving to a formal and definitive confirmation vote.
The vote is expected around 10:30 am (1430 GMT). That same threshold of 50 also applies to the final confirmation vote.
Thursday was a day of high drama and emotion in Washington: protesters swamped Capitol Hill and roamed the corridors of the Senate to lobby lawmakers who took turns in a secure basement room reviewing a single copy of the new FBI report on Kavanaugh.
More than 300 people were arrested, including the comedian Amy Schumer, who is a second cousin of Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer, and model Emily Ratajkowski.
Republicans insisted that a week-long investigation, summed up in the FBI dossier, had turned up nothing to corroborate the sexual assault allegations against the 53-year-old Kavanaugh, who now sits on a federal court in Washington.
Democrats assailed the probe as an incomplete vetting constrained by a White House determined to push through the lifetime appointment of Trump's man.
And the New York Times said more than 2,400 law professors signed a letter opposing the nomination, saying that at the hearing Kavanaugh "did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament" required for the Supreme Court.
The nominee himself closed out Thursday's fast-moving events by taking the extraordinary step of publishing an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal to defend himself as impartial.
Kavanaugh stood by his performance during last week's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which he denied the misconduct allegations, made at the same hearing, of a California university professor.
That teacher, Christine Blasey Ford, said he drunkenly groped her and attempted to rape her when they were teenagers attending a party in suburban Washington in the early 1980s. Two other women have accused him of sexual misconduct during his university years.
In his testimony, Kavanaugh complained about "a calculated and orchestrated political hit fuelled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election."
"I do not decide cases based on personal or policy preferences," he added, saying the country's top court "must never be viewed as a partisan institution."
Speaking to reporters after reviewing the FBI report, Collins said it "appears to be a very thorough investigation."
Flake, a vocal Trump critic who pushed the White House into giving the FBI an additional week to address the accusations against Kavanaugh, signalled his apparent satisfaction, saying the report contained "no additional corroborating information."
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