President Donald Trump said Thursday that another Republican president would have “abandoned” Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after the allegations against him.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said that he could have taken “the easier path” and withdrawn Kavanaugh’s nomination after he was accused of sexual assault.
"I felt that it would be a horrible thing not to go through with this," the president said. "The easier path would have been — you know we have some good people [on his Supreme Court shortlist], they're all amazing people. But I felt it would be so horrible and so unfair to him, I thought it would have been destructive, it would have been terrible."
Trump added that he thought Kavanaugh “was treated very unfairly,” saying that he thought the process would be “very easy” when he chose the judge.
"You could see he was just — he couldn't believe that this could be happening. Remember there was one time when they put something in front of him and he was reading and ... he's reading it and he's just shaking his head because by this time it had started, this whole deal had started. And he's just thinking ... and I knew what he was thinking, 'I can't believe this is happening to me.'"
Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate last Saturday, by a vote of 50-48. Trump declared at his swearing in ceremony that the judge had been “proven innocent.”